NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration logo.
February 6, 2019
An urgent update of the global magnetic model, essential for many navigation systems, was released this week.
Image above: very cool interactive tool for the current magnetic recession and historic location of the north magnetic pole.
Geographic North is not Magnetic North. The latter is currently traveling at a speed of 55 km per year. This discovery forced scientists to publish this week a new magnetic model, essential to many navigation systems.
The global magnetic model is used for aerial and naval navigation of armies, but also by phone compasses. It is updated every five years, but the latest model, dating back to 2015, was out of step with the observations made at the end of 2018.
NCEI has released an out-of-cycle World Magnetic Model to ensure safe navigation
The Earth's magnetic field is generated mainly by the movement of the liquid iron that makes up the majority of the Earth's core, 3000 km below the surface. This is what makes the magnetic poles derive. The model makes it possible to correct the direction indicated by the compass in order to find the geographic North, which is fixed. The discovery of magnetic north in northern Canada dates back to 1831.
From 15 km per year to 55 km per year
Scientists from US and British atmospheric agencies (NOAA and BGS) released an urgent update of the model on Monday, before a normal update in late 2019.
Concretely, if one compared the direction indicated by the needle of a compass of France between today and two centuries ago, there would be a difference of about twenty degrees, explains to AFP Arnaud Chulliat, geophysicist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and NOAA.
Position of the north magnetic pole since 1590
"It's a very slow movement, but it's very real. Over several decades, this can reach several degrees, "he says. This shift does not matter much in the most populated latitudes, but "near the magnetic pole, change is faster".
Magnetic North has, over the centuries, moved more or less unpredictably into the archipelagos of Canada's far north. Since the end of the 19th century, he has been heading for Siberia. Since the 1990s, the movement has accelerated, across the Arctic Ocean, from about 15 km/year (9.32 miles/year) to 55 km/year (34.17 miles/year) today.
NOAA / NCEI: World Magnetic Model Out-of-Cycle Release:
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/world-magnetic-model-out-cycle-release
NOAA - National Centers for Environmental Information: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/
Images, Text, Credits: ATS/NOAA/NCEI/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.
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