Evening star., 1953-04-13
North Pole Moved South
About 8 Feet Since 1900
It's q Slow Shift and Based
On Melting Of Ice Cops
By Thomos R. Henry
The North Pole is moving south.

The North Pole is moving south.
It appears, at least. that 1t moved
about ten feet toward the north tin of
Greenland between 1900 and 1925, but
since then it may have retraced its
steps by a foot or so.
This is the conclusion of Drs. Walter
Munk and Roger Revelle of the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
1t is based on the apparent rise and
fall in sea level due essentially to the
melting Of the great, Greenland and.
perhaps, Antarctic ice caps. More
water in the sea alters slightly the dis
trlbution of matter and mass in the
planet. lengthens the days and dis
places the poles.
There is some indication that the
poles, or the land masses under them,
have shifted very violently in the
earth's history. The South Pole, for
example, appears at one time to have
been over the land which now consti-
tutes central Africa, but this hardly
can have been due to the shifting of
the pole itself.
Levels Difficult To Fix.
Determination of actual changes in
sea level all over the earth is ex-
tremely difficult. Increases in one place
are offset by decreases in another. Still.
Drs. Munk and Revelle point out in a
report just published in the American
Journal of Science, that a study of
all the data makes it highly probable
that there has been an average in
crease of about ten inches in the past
100 years.
With the redistribution of matter
due to the melting of the ice the rate
OF the earth'S rotation slows down
Slightly-that is, the day gets longer.
Between 1870 and 1900, there is some
indication the day length increased by
an average of about six thousands Of
second. Between 1910 and 1880 it
apparently decreased by about 4.OOOthS
of second.
This evidence correlateS fairly we'll
with the evidence of the rise and fall
OF sea level. For the past five or six
Thousand years the earth has been
emerging from the last ice age. This
has not been steady progress. Ice
caps have melted for a few decades
and then built up again. The progress
on the whole, however, has been to.
wards decline of the great polar masses.
Some concern has been felt of late
lest the earth may be at the start of
another ice age, or another cold inter.
val in continuing ice age from which
there has been brief remission. This
can be postulated from the decline and
increase of glaciers. But the general
impression is that the planet may be
in one of the downs" in q recurring
IF ov1l
all progress has been towards milder
climate. Sea levels are rising and days
getting longer-a situation with dire
forebodings If it continues long enough
for the complete melting of the ice
caps, which would place a lot Of the
habttable world at the bottom of the
sea. 1t has happened in the remote
past.
Explain Changes.
The recorded changes, Drs. Munk
and Revelle point out. apparently can
be pretty well explained by an average
overall increase in sea level due to
melting ice. Even If no ice melted,
they point out sea level would be in
creased minutely by warming of the
oceans with the consequent expansion
They explore another possibility
that the release of ice pressure over
Greenland and Antarctica would change
the distribution Of the planets mass by
permitting the flow under the land of
molten material now buried deep under
the seas. Theoretically this can take
place. It would affect the movements
of the poles and the length of the day
in other ways.
Apparently, however, the ice melting
has not gone far enough to permit this
to take place on any major scale. It
would have resulted. they calculate, in
movement of the North Pole to posi-
ton 81 feet closer to Greenland, six
feet closer to Newfoundland and feet
closer to Chicago. But only Greenland,
observations show. is appreciably closer
to the earthS northern most point.
Changes observable now, of course.
are almost inf1nitesimal and are
significant only as indicators of the di-
rection in which the earth is moving.
Continued over few hundred thousand
years they would appreciably alter the
appearance and behavior of this planet.