Earth’s magnetic north pole is moving so quickly and unpredictably that our existing navigation models will have to be updated years earlier than scheduled.

What’s happening: The magnetic north pole is wandering away from the Canadian Arctic toward Siberia, and much faster than expected. It’s sped up from about 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) to around 55 kilometers (34 miles) per year, according to Nature. The magnetic north pole is influenced by the movement of liquid iron below Earth’s surface. The World Magnetic Model, which provides a five-year forecast of the planet’s magnetic field, was last set in 2015 and due to be updated in 2020, but these rapid movements mean it’ll have to be updated this year.

Why does it matter? We rely on the model for the magnetometers built into our smartphones, which sit below the mapping apps that help us to get around. Organizations like NATO and the US Department of Defense also use it for navigation systems.

Yet another shutdown victim: The scheduled fix to the model was due to take place today, but it’s been pushed back to January 30 by the US government shutdown. </s> Rapid shifts in the Earth's north magnetic pole are forcing researchers to make an unprecedented early update to a model that helps navigation by ships, planes and submarines in the Arctic, scientists said.

Compass needles point towards the north magnetic pole, a point which has crept unpredictably from the coast of northern Canada a century ago to the middle of the Arctic Ocean, moving towards Russia.

"It's moving at about 50 km (30 miles) a year. It didn't move much between 1900 and 1980 but it's really accelerated in the past 40 years," Ciaran Beggan, of the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, told Reuters on Friday.

A five-year update of a World Magnetic Model was due in 2020 but the U.S. military requested an unprecedented early review, he said. The BGS runs the model with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Beggan said the moving pole affected navigation, mainly in the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. NATO and the U.S. and British militaries are among those using the magnetic model, as well as civilian navigation.

The wandering pole is driven by unpredictable changes in liquid iron deep inside the Earth. An update will be released on January 30, the journal Nature said, delayed from January 15 because of the U.S. government shutdown.

"The fact that the pole is going fast makes this region more prone to large errors," Arnaud Chulliat, a geomagnetist at the University of Colorado Boulder and NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, told Nature.

Beggan said the recent shifts in the north magnetic pole would be unnoticed by most people outside the Arctic, for instance using smartphones in New York, Beijing or London.

Navigation systems in cars or phones rely on radio waves from satellites high above the Earth to pinpoint their position on the ground.

"It doesn't really affect mid or low latitudes," Beggan said. "It wouldn't really affect anyone driving a car."

Many smartphones have inbuilt compasses to help to orientate maps or games such as Pokemon Go. In most places, however, the compass would be pointing only fractionally wrong, within errors allowed in the five-year models, Beggan said. </s> Magnetic North Pole Shifting Rapidly and Unpredictably

Credit: Captain David "Duke" Snider

By The Maritime Executive 2019-01-12 19:52:24

The Earth’s north magnetic pole is shifting so rapidly that steps are being taken to ensure it doesn't impact navigation in the Arctic.

Compass needles point towards the north magnetic pole, a point that has moved from Canada to the middle of the Arctic Ocean over the last century. It is currently moving towards Siberia at about 50 kilometers (30 miles) a year.

The World Magnetic Model predicts the Earth's geomagnetic field for the next five years, and it is normally produced every five years. Scientists have now recognized that the 2015 World Magnetic Model needs updating earlier than planned, but the update has been postponed from January 15 to January 30 due to the ongoing U.S. government shutdown.

Since late 2014, the core field has varied in a currently unpredictable manner. This led to the World Magnetic Model becoming less accurate, particularly at high northern latitudes, much faster than normal. The variations have been attributed to an abrupt unpredictable change in 2014/2015 and an acceleration of flow in the core in the northern hemisphere.

The Model is produced by the British Geological Survey and NOAA, on behalf of the U.K. Defence Geographic Centre and the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. It is a model of the primary component of the geomagnetic field: the Earth’s core. The core field is generated by dynamic action in the swirling iron-rich fluid of the outer core, roughly 3,500 kilometers below the Earth's surface. The ever-changing flow of the outer core leads to an ever-changing magnetic field.

“The magnetic poles drift, the field strengthens and weakens, and the immense magnetic field of the Sun, carried by the solar wind, constantly batters at it from the outside,” says British Geological Survey blogger, Will Brown . “The World Magnetic Model is the standard magnetic model used for navigation by organizations such as NATO, the Ministry of Defence, and the U.S.’ Department of Defense, and also by smartphone operating systems such as Android and iOS. When you open your smartphone’s map app, you may see an arrow pointing which way you’re facing, and there’s something quite clever going on underneath. Your phone contains a magnetometer that is measuring the Earth’s magnetic field. In order to make sense of this information a reference model like the World Magnetic Model is needed to correct the measurements of magnetic north made by your phone to True North.”

The next scheduled update to the World Magnetic Model is expected in December 2019. </s> We have Earth’s churning metallic interior to thank for the magnetic field that keeps us safe from the harsh radiation of space, but it’s churning a little faster than expected lately. That means the magnetic pole is wobbling around, causing various navigation issues across the globe. Luckily, there’s a model that corrects for this wobble. Unluckily, a crucial update to the magnetic pole model is delayed because of the US government shutdown. As a result, navigation on Earth is getting increasingly inaccurate.

You may think of the north pole as a geographic location, and that’s true — there is a geographic north pole that doesn’t move. However, there’s also a magnetic north pole that usually drifts about 9.3 miles (15 kilometers) per year. However, the rate of magnetic slippage has increased dramatically in the last few years. Beginning in 2014, the pole has moved an average of 34 miles (55 kilometers) each year.

If all you want to know is the heading of true magnetic north, the shifting pole doesn’t matter much — your compass still points the way. However, if you want to use that heading on top of a map, changes in the pole can screw up navigation. The World Magnetic Model (WMM) provides a correction for the pole shift, but that model is managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). With the government shutdown in effect for almost a month, no one is there to update the model.

The last WMM update came in 2015, but as of last year, the model was already tremendously outdated. Because of the increasing pole shift, a major update to the WMM was due on January 15th. The new WMM would have taken into account the last three years of scientific data, including a powerful geomagnetic pulse under South America in 2016. The update didn’t happen, and it won’t until the US government re-opens.

Thankfully, navigation is no longer completely reliant on compass headings, but it’s still an important factor for organizations like NATO, the UK Ministry of Defence, and the US Department of Defense. Your smartphone also uses a compass to determine your orientation. The error in matching magnetic north to a map is more severe the closer you are to the pole. Near the equator, the error is tiny. In the North Sea, it might make a difference.

The pole is currently drifting toward Siberia by a few kilometers per month. The longer we go without a WMM, the more out of sync navigation will get.
• US Senator Asks Government Agencies to Stop Using Flash
• NASA Determines Why Earth Wobbles on its Axis </s> Rapid and erratic movements of Earth’s north magnetic pole have prompted an early update to a model that assists with navigation. The scheduled fix was supposed to happen on January 15, but the U.S. government shutdown has forced an unwelcome delay.

The magnetic north pole is shifting at an unprecedented rate. Over the last 30 years, the rate of distance that the magnetic north pole moves per year has sped up, around 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) per year to around 55 kilometers (34 miles) per year, according to Nature. Unlike the static geographic north pole, the north magnetic pole is in constant flux, influenced by the movements of iron-rich fluids deep below the Earth’s crust. Or at least that’s the theory—the whole thing is still somewhat of a scientific mystery.

The World Magnetic Model (WMM) provides a five-year forecast of the Earth’s magnetic field, which assists with navigation. But the rapid and irregular movements of the north magnetic pole over the past three years have made the 2015 WMM inaccurate. An unprecedented early update was supposed to happen on January 15, 2019, but that’s been bumped to January 30 owing to the ongoing U.S. government shutdown, reports Nature. The WMM forecasts are produced by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the British Geological Survey (BGS) on behalf of the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the U.K. Defence Geographic Centre.

The WMM describes the primary engine responsible for magnetic pole movement: the Earth’s core. Beginning in late 2014, however, the core geomagnetic field started to shift in a way that hadn’t been predicted, wrote BGS scientist Will Brown at his blog. In addition to this abrupt change, scientists started to observe accelerations of flow in the core in the northern hemisphere. And in 2016, a particularly powerful geomagnetic pulse under South America complicated matters even further, the Nature article explained.

By March 2018, the 2015 WMM had become woefully out of date, with the BGS saying it was “no longer meeting its accuracy requirements.” Hence the need to update the map a year earlier than usual. For the fix, scientists will add three years of scientific data to the model, taking the 2016 pulse into account.

Obviously, we’re no longer solely dependent on compasses for navigation, so it’s unlikely that ships will run aground or planes will smash into mountains as a result of the government shutdown. But as Brown explains, an inaccurate WMM is not without implications.

The WMM is the standard magnetic model used for navigation by organizations such as NATO, the Ministry of Defence, and the U.S. Department of Defense, and also by smartphone operating systems such as Android and iOS. When you open your smartphone’s map app, you may see an arrow pointing which way you’re facing, and there’s something quite clever going on underneath. Your phone contains a magnetometer that is measuring the Earth’s magnetic field. In order to make sense of this information a reference model like the WMM is needed to correct the measurements of magnetic north made by your phone to True North.

Indeed, the accuracy of a phone’s compass is only as good as the WMM. For example, let’s say you were on a boat at a distance of 1 mile from the north magnetic pole. The arrow on your phone’s compass will point directly at the magnetic north, but the corresponding map on your phone—because it’s referencing an inaccurate forecast of where the magnetic north should be—will likely give you a false impression of where you are on the planet. And given the degree to which the magnetic north pole is moving each year, the map could be really off.

It’s important to point out that, the farther you are from the north magnetic pole, the less of an issue this becomes. Arnaud Chulliat, a geomagnetist at the University of Colorado and NOAA, told Nature that the rapid movements of the north magnetic pole makes navigational systems in the Arctic “more prone to large errors.” Unless you live way up north or work for any of the defense agencies listed above, you likely have nothing to worry about. As BGS scientist Ciaran Beggan told Reuters, the compasses in our smartphones will only be “fractionally wrong,” and “within errors allowed in the five-year models.”

Regardless, it’ll be good to get an accurate WMM in place as soon as possible. The north magnetic pole shifts around 3 to 5 kilometers (2 to 3 miles) each month in the general direction of Siberia. Ah, nothing like a government shutdown to remind us of the wide net cast by our public institutions. </s> Earth's north magnetic pole has been drifting so fast in the last few decades that scientists say that past estimates are no longer accurate enough for precise navigation.

 

 Earth's geographic north pole is fixed. But the planet's magnetic north pole -- the north that every compass points toward -- is moving at a speed of about 55 kilometers per year.

It crossed the international date line in 2017 and is leaving the Canadian Arctic on its way to Siberia.

 

 The rapid movement forced scientists to release an update of the World Magnetic Model (WMM), or the actual position of the magnetic on February 4 -- almost a year earlier than expected -- in order to allow navigational services, including map-based phone apps, to keep working accurately.

 

 GPS isn't affected because it's satellite-based, but airplanes and boats also rely on magnetic north, usually as backup navigation, said University of Colorado geophysicist Arnaud Chulliat, lead author of the newly issued WMM.

 

 In the 189 years since it was first measured in the Canadian Arctic, it has moved some 2,300 kilometers toward Siberia, and its speed jumped from about 15 kilometers per year to 55 kilometers per year since 2000.

 

 The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tends to update the location of the magnetic north pole every five years in December, but this update came early because of the pole's faster movement.

 

 The reason is turbulence in Earth's liquid outer core of iron and nickel, says University of Maryland geophysicist Daniel Lathrop.

"It has changes akin to weather," Lathrop said. "We might just call it magnetic weather." </s> I have been seeing some headlines pointing out that Earth’s magnetic field is acting up and that scientists don’t understand why, so I thought I would take the time to clear up the issue.

Earth’s magnetic pole is moving in the direction of Siberia and away from Canada. This is something that scientists have been tracking for a long time. It’s fairly easy to look up the location of the magnetic pole dating back to the early 1900s. The recent changes of the drifting pole are raising some concerns but the direction is not the problem. In fact, the direction of the drifting pole has been roughly the same for as long as scientists have been tracking it. The speed is the issue.

Every five years scientists recalculate the location of the magnetic pole. This is important information for global navigation, which includes GPS satellites and other technology. These changes can make a big difference in our everyday lives.

Scientists at NOAA and the British Geological Survey check how accurate the World Magnetic Model is every year and when they did their check this year they noticed some large differences. Primarily that the pole’s movement had sped up. The location data for the pole was supposed to last until 2020 before it needed to be updated but according to experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it needs to be updated now.

Why is this happening?

The movement of the pole is caused by flows of molten liquid iron in the Earth’s core. This liquid and how it moves creates the Earth’s magnetic field. Variations in the liquid flow cause the magnetic field to change over time and cause the location of magnetic north to move.

The global model was off because of a geomagnetic pulse the occurred beneath South America in 2016. This pulse just came at a bad time. The 2015 World Magnetic Model was brand new and not scheduled to be renewed until 2020. It seems that in the future we may not be able to wait as long between updates. The poles movement has sped up in recent memory from 9 miles a year in the 1990s to about 34 miles a year at present day. A new model needs to be implemented as soon as possible and even then they will have to rework the model again in 2020. Until then navigation might be affected.

What caused the geomagnetic pulse beneath South America is unknown. If you have been seeing headlines that imply the scientists are clueless or don’t understand what is happening this is what they are talking about. Anomalies like this happen from time to time and honestly, it’s nothing to be worried about.

Why is the pole moving?

In the northern hemisphere, deep within the Earth, there are two large areas of magnetic strength being generated by the liquid metal surrounding Earth’s core. One is under Canada and the other is under Siberia. What we are seeing now is the result of those two areas pulling against each other.

It’s also worth noting that the release of the new model is being delayed due to the US government shutdown. If you would like to know more about this issue please write your Senator and ask them to reopen the government. </s> The magnetic North Pole is moving — Why this is important Something strange is going on at the top of the world. Earth’s north magnetic pole has been moving away from Canada and towards Siberia at such a fast pace that our navigation models will have to be updated sooner than expected. "It's moving at about 50 km (30 miles) a year. It didn't move much between 1900 and 1980 but it's really accelerated in the past 40 years," Ciaran Beggan, of the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, told Reuters on Friday, according to The Earth's crust, mantle, and core. Top right: a section through the crust and the uppermost mantle. World Magnetic Model update The Updated model coefficients are released at 5-year intervals, with the current model (WMM2015) expiring on December 31, 2019. The next update to the WMM is due in 2020, however, the magnetic field is changing so rapidly that researchers have to fix the model now. Why does all this even matter? Besides all the international organizations that rely on the WMM for navigation - ships, aircraft, antennas, drilling equipment, and other devices depend on the WMM to calculate true bearings - as well as people checking Google Maps on their smartphones and other devices. Consensus has long been that the Earth's core is about 85 percent iron and 10 percent nickel, with sulphur, oxygen and silicon prime candidates for the other five percent On January 15, researchers were set to However, because of President Trump's refusal to open our government for business, the scheduled fix to the model that was due to take place today has been pushed back to January 30 by the What's going on deep inside the Earth? Researchers were able to figure out back in the 1800s that the magnetic North Pole tended to drift a bit. But by the 1990s, the speed of that drift really began to pick up. In 2018, magnetic north skipped over the International Date Line and entered the Eastern Hemisphere. The unusual movements of the magnetic pole are caused primarily by the Artist's concept of one of the eight Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System satellites deployed in space. Both changes in the liquid outer core affect the magnetic North Pole as well as Earthquakes, with the outer core transmitting seismic waves. The outer core is about 2,200 kilometers (1.367 miles) thick and is made of liquid iron and nickel alloy. The temperature of the outer core nearest the mantle is 4,400 degrees Celsius (7,952 degrees Fahrenheit). In attempting to understand what is happening, Phil Livermore, a geomagnetist at the University of Leeds, UK, surmised the fast motion of the north magnetic pole could be linked to a high-speed jet of liquid iron beneath Canada. He thinks the jet may be smearing out and weakening the magnetic field beneath Canada “The location of the north magnetic pole appears to be governed by two large-scale patches of the magnetic field, one beneath Canada and one beneath Siberia,” Livermore said at the The movement is caused by liquid iron sloshing around within the planet’s core. Compasses point toward the Magnetic North Pole which has been creeping away from the coast of northern Canada - where it was a century ago - to the middle of the Arctic Ocean, where it is today."It's moving at about 50 km (30 miles) a year. It didn't move much between 1900 and 1980 but it's really accelerated in the past 40 years," Ciaran Beggan, of the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, told Reuters on Friday, according to CBC Canada. The World Magnetic Model (WMM) is a standard model of the core and large-scale crustal magnetic field. It is used extensively for navigation and in attitude and heading reference systems by the UK Ministry of Defence, the US Department of Defense, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the International Hydrographic Organization.Updated model coefficients are released at 5-year intervals, with the current model (WMM2015) expiring on December 31, 2019. The next update to the WMM is due in 2020, however, the magnetic field is changing so rapidly that researchers have to fix the model now.Besides all the international organizations that rely on the WMM for navigation - ships, aircraft, antennas, drilling equipment, and other devices depend on the WMM to calculate true bearings - as well as people checking Google Maps on their smartphones and other devices.On January 15, researchers were set to update the WMM because of the magnetic pole moving so quickly. “The error is increasing all the time,” says Arnaud Chulliat, a geomagnetist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Centers for Environmental Information.However, because of President Trump's refusal to open our government for business, the scheduled fix to the model that was due to take place today has been pushed back to January 30 by the partial US government shutdown. Researchers were able to figure out back in the 1800s that the magnetic North Pole tended to drift a bit. But by the 1990s, the speed of that drift really began to pick up. In 2018, magnetic north skipped over the International Date Line and entered the Eastern Hemisphere.The unusual movements of the magnetic pole are caused primarily by the Earth's liquid-iron outer core, known as the core field. The Earth has a solid inner core and liquid outer core, both made mostly of iron. Scientists believe Earth's core is responsible for the planet's magnetic field as well as plate tectonics.Both changes in the liquid outer core affect the magnetic North Pole as well as Earthquakes, with the outer core transmitting seismic waves. The outer core is about 2,200 kilometers (1.367 miles) thick and is made of liquid iron and nickel alloy. The temperature of the outer core nearest the mantle is 4,400 degrees Celsius (7,952 degrees Fahrenheit).In attempting to understand what is happening, Phil Livermore, a geomagnetist at the University of Leeds, UK, surmised the fast motion of the north magnetic pole could be linked to a high-speed jet of liquid iron beneath Canada. He thinks the jet may be smearing out and weakening the magnetic field beneath Canada“The location of the north magnetic pole appears to be governed by two large-scale patches of the magnetic field, one beneath Canada and one beneath Siberia,” Livermore said at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Washington D.C. in December. “The Siberian patch is winning the competition.” </s> Distinct from the geographic North Pole, where all the lines of longitude meet at the top of the world, the magnetic pole is the point that a compass recognizes as north. At the moment, it’s 4 degrees south of the geographic North Pole, which lies in the Arctic Ocean at 90 degrees north.

But that wasn’t always the case.

In the mid-19th century, the north magnetic pole floated much farther south, roaming around Canada. For the past 150 years, however, the pole has been sprinting away from Canada and toward Siberia.

That change of address cannot be ignored, given that magnetic compasses still underpin modern navigation, from the systems used by civilian and military airplanes to those that orient your iPhone.

In 1965, scientists began a data-based representation of Earth’s magnetic field in order to better keep track of the pole’s ever-changing home. The World Magnetic Model is updated every five years — most recently in 2015 — because the magnetic field is constantly shifting.

In early 2018, it became clear that 2015’s edition was in trouble, because the pole’s Siberian stroll had picked up speed, rendering the model — and therefore a number of navigational systems — incorrect.

So for the first time, scientists have updated the model ahead of schedule, which they released Monday afternoon. Since this work was completed in the wake of the partial government shutdown (which delayed its full release), researchers are still trying to get a handle on the mysteries within Earth’s core that must be driving the magnetic pole’s surprising behavior.

The north magnetic pole’s dizzying dance was discovered nearly 400 years ago, when Henry Gellibrand, an English mathematician, realized that it had jumped hundreds of miles closer to the geographic pole over the course of 50 years.

“That was a big, monumental recognition that the field was not static, but dynamic,” said Andrew Jackson, a geophysicist at ETH Zurich.

It didn’t take long, however, before magnetic north flipped direction and started to move away from the geographic pole — demonstrating that the field is not just dynamic, it’s unpredictable.

“The problem that we’re still facing today is that we don’t have a good scheme to predict how the field will change,” Jackson said.

So scientists began tracking the ever-changing magnetic field. The first magnetic maps, which were hand-drawn by exploring sailors, revealed that for the next two centuries, magnetic north twirled among the many islands and channels of the Arctic Archipelago.

Then around 1860, it took a sharp turn toward Siberia. Since then, the pole has traveled nearly 1,500 miles and was most recently found in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, still en route to Russia.

Scientists attribute this wanderlust to the liquid iron sloshing within our planet’s outer core. That iron is buoyant — it rises, cools and then sinks. And that motion below carries Earth’s magnetic field with it, producing changes above.

To more accurately map those changes, scientists launched the precursor to the World Magnetic Model nearly 55 years ago, which began as a collaboration between the United States and Britain.

The map we know today has existed in its current form since 1990 and is created by an agency within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Geological Survey. It’s commissioned by U.S. and British military agencies, and used by many other militaries across the world.

Alongside GPS, navigational systems used by satellites, aircraft, ships and other vehicles rely on magnetic compasses to ensure they’re moving in the correct direction. Perhaps the most visible sign of this can be found at the end of every airport runway, where large white numbers reflect the runway’s magnetic heading.

But as the magnetic field shifts, those headings change and runways get a makeover. This year, for example, the runways that make up the Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport in Wichita, Kansas, will receive new names that match their new headings. The process — which includes repainting the huge numbers at the end of each runway and replacing other signage — is likely to cost several hundred thousand dollars.

And it all depends on the World Magnetic Model, which is not easy to build. Unlike the kilogram or the second, the magnetic field cannot be defined once and then used for decades.

“The magnetic field is constantly changing,” said Susan McLean, the retired chief of the geophysical sciences division at NOAA, who helped set the magnetic model in the past. “It changes with time. It changes with location. And it changes the way it changes.” Tracking the planetary magnetic field, she added, is more akin to forecasting the weather.

And like the weather, perfectly predicting where the pole will move is downright impossible. But scientists can get close with a wealth of data collected from satellite and ground-based observatories. That data allows them to deduce how the magnetic field has changed over the past several years and to extrapolate into the future with a model that will — hopefully — remain accurate for the next five years.

After scientists released the World Magnetic Model in 2015, they periodically checked it against field measurements to ensure that it was accurately predicting variations in Earth’s magnetic field. When they ran that check in early 2018, they discovered that the model and reality were out of alignment.

“We noticed that the error in the Arctic was increasing faster than what we would expect,” said Arnaud Chulliat, a geophysicist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and NOAA.

Although the north magnetic pole has long been scurrying away from Canada and toward Siberia, the rate of its movement drastically changes. Throughout most of the 20th century, it drifted at roughly 6 miles per year. In the 1980s, it picked up speed, and by the year 2000 it was traveling at 35 miles per year on the way out of Canada.

Then, in 2015, the pole slowed to 30 miles per year. So when the team issued the most recent magnetic map, scientists predicted that the speed would continue dropping — only it didn’t.

Just after the model was released, the north magnetic pole picked up momentum again, and now it is fluctuating at around 35 miles per year. In late 2017, the pole crossed the international date line into the Eastern Hemisphere.

“It’s not the fact that the pole is moving that is a problem, it’s the fact that it’s accelerating at this rate,” said William Brown, a geophysicist at the British Geological Survey. “The more acceleration or deceleration there is, the harder to predict where the thing is going to be.”

And that means the model is currently incorrect — at least, in the Arctic.

While many of us might not spend much time — or any time — at the top of the world, some international airline flights fly close to the geographic North Pole. They need the magnetic model to be accurate for safe journeys.

If you were to use the current model to travel to the north magnetic pole, you would end up 25 miles away from where the pole actually resides.

So scientists raced to fix the model by feeding it several years of recent data. Together, BGS and NOAA have made a new version available.

But efforts to finish the revision on publicly available online systems maintained by NOAA were delayed by the partial government shutdown in the United States. The researchers were able to complete the update Monday.

The public maps will have many uses, from recalculating runway names to ensuring that Defense Department systems are properly installed. Engineers incorporate the model into the navigation systems on your smartphone and in your car.

But for most people at low- and mid-latitudes, the current model is safe to use.

“South of 65 degrees north and away from Canada, the average user will notice very little difference to their daily life,” said Ciaran Beggan, a geophysicist at BGS.

With the updates complete, scientists are eager to understand the causes of the pole’s Siberian sprint. “It’s clear that something strange is happening,” said Phil Livermore, a geophysicist at the University of Leeds in England.

On multiple occasions during Earth’s long history, the magnetic field has weakened significantly. The north magnetic pole slipped toward the bottom of the planet, and the south magnetic sauntered toward the top. The process took a few thousand years, but by the time the field’s full strength returns, it has flipped.

The pole’s recent journey, along with other changes — like a weakening of Earth’s magnetic field — has led some scientists to wonder whether such a reversal might be around the corner, geologically speaking.

“It does tick off some of the boxes of magnetic reversal,” said Courtney Sprain, a geophysicist at the University of Liverpool in England, who added that “we definitely can’t say that for sure.”

Most scientists, including Sprain, doubt an impending geomagnetic reversal. First, while the north magnetic pole does appear to be on the move, it doesn’t represent a global phenomenon, just a regional one.

Livermore thinks there are two large magnetic structures in the planet’s outer core, one beneath Canada and one beneath Siberia, which interact together to emit the magnetic pole.

The Canadian patch is weakening, which means that it’s essentially losing a tug-of-war, causing the north magnetic pole to turn toward Siberia, while the south magnetic pole is standing relatively still.

Second, while Earth’s magnetic field is weakening, many experts say it’s still above the long-term geologic average.

Peter Olson, a geophysicist at Johns Hopkins University, thinks that the current changes represent a transient fluctuation and not a reversal.

Even if the magnetic field were on the edge of a flip, scientists argue that it’s not an apocalyptic scenario. Although the field provides essential protection from the sun’s powerful radiation, fossil records reveal no mass extinctions during past reversals.

And whatever the risks to power grids and communications, humanity would have ample time to prepare.

“Of all the problems we have, this is not a top 10 problem,” Olson said.
The correction of the North Magnetic Pole model, one year ahead of the regular five-year update, scheduled to be released this week is delayed until the end of January because of the U.S. federal government shutdown. The model is used in navigation and by the GPS systems in smartphones. The pole has been wandering, much faster than expected, away from the Canadian Arctic toward Siberia.