Why the North Pole is Moving

Photo: Steve Snodgrass

What is the world’s northernmost spot? Where the sun is blinding and the air is painfully cold and it is 15 degrees below zero. The place that is in constant daylight for six months and stays in darkness for the other six is the North Pole.

But did you know that anyone who is at the North Pole at one moment is not there a few minutes later? Has the time come to adjust our magnetic compasses? Yes, this phenomenon is absolutely true. The North Pole is a moving target that keeps on changing every minute. Today, the magnetic North Pole is moving from far northern Canada towards Russia at a rate of about 40 miles per year.

It was just a few days ago when the busiest runway 18R/36L at the Tampa International Airport in Florida had received its new dimensions. The authorities had to renumber the runway to 19R/1 on account of the North Pole shifting. But this is only a temporary fix.

This is not the first ever incident of pole shifting. Poles have shifted before too. About 800 million years ago, the North Pole rested in the middle of the Pacific. Several times in a million years, the earth’s magnetic pole does a full flip. The last shift was over 780,000 years ago.

The North Pole is also a magnetic pole that is produced by a flow of iron in the Earth’s core. This constantly moving molten iron creates magnetism on a planetary scale with the magnetic pole and the South Pole. After a shift, compass needles should point south instead of north. The present collapse appears to have started about 150 years ago.

Photo: Torley

Over the years, the shift also had a great impact on global warming. For many years, dozens of researchers, navigators and scientists have visited the North Pole to study the changes in the Arctic environment due to global warming. One interesting point is that as the Arctic ice drifts, it carries research stations with it, making it vulnerable to the effects of warmer temperatures.

Today, we cannot put up a flag or a pole marked with 'North Pole' in one place because all the ice beneath us is on the move. Also, we don’t know when the next full flip will occur. But for now, there is no reason to panic as it might take a few thousand years more.

Source: 1, 2