Earth's magnetic field is behaving erratically. The planet's shifting magnetic poles could cause navigational problems. Photo by Shutterstock

Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Magnetic North is shifting rapidly, throwing off the World Magnetic Model that powers a variety of global navigational systems.

Scientists were originally scheduled to release an updated model this week -- a fix for the accumulating anomalies -- but due to the government shutdown, the update's release has been delayed until the end of the month.

Scientists with the British Geological Survey and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration update the World Magnetic Model every five years. The last full update came in 2015. Shortly afterwards, a portion of Earth's magnetic field briefly shifted deep beneath northern South America.

Over the last few years, the erratic behavior continued.

"Since late 2014 the core field has varied in an unpredicted, and currently unpredictable, manner," British Geological Survey scientist Will Brown wrote in a blog update. "This led to the WMM becoming less accurate, particularly at high northern latitudes."

Most recently, Magnetic North migrated rapidly into Siberia. According to a recent report by Nature, scientists realized the model was in serious trouble early last year.

"Researchers from NOAA and the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh had been doing their annual check of how well the model was capturing all the variations in Earth's magnetic field," Alexandra Witze reported. "They realized that it was so inaccurate that it was about to exceed the acceptable limit for navigational errors."

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In December, NOAA issued a partial update to patch up the most glaring errors, but the model remains inaccurate. The forthcoming update is desperately needed.

Scientists think the magnetic field's erratic behavior is explained by changes in the flow of iron inside Earth's outer core. But it's also possible Earth's magnetic poles are on the verge of reversing.

The planet's magnetic poles flip every 200,000 to 300,000 years, but an attempted flip 40,000 years ago failed. Earth's poles haven't flipped in nearly 800,000 years. In other words, they're due.

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Though powered by the swirl of iron and nickel in Earth's molten core, a variety of factors can influence the planet's 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," according to Brown. "The effect of all these changes vary depending on when and where you are on, under, or above the Earth's surface."

Researchers with NOAA and BGS hope to gain a better understanding of what's driving the magnetic field's erratic behavior before their next World Magnetic Model update, scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.</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.
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• NASA Determines Why Earth Wobbles on its Axis</s>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 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>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>As the humans go about their affairs, living atop a thin crust floating on molten rock, the liquid iron in the Earth’s core is churning in strange, erratic ways.

This is a problem because those humans, clever in some ways, have figured out that the movement of the liquid iron creates a magnetic field. For centuries, their compasses have pointed “north.” But where that is, exactly, is changing.

After observing, if not exactly understanding, the magnetic field’s recent behavior, scientists decided to update the World Magnetic Model, which underlies navigation for ships and planes today. As Nature reported, the update was supposed to come January 15. But the model is jointly developed by the British Geological Survey and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. government is shut down.

The NOAA web page for the World Magnetic Model currently says, “The website you are trying to access is not available at this time due to a lapse in appropriation.”

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This isn’t a big crisis: The north magnetic pole has always drifted. Since scientists began tracking its location in the 19th century, it has moved from Canada toward Siberia. (The north magnetic pole is close to but distinct from the north geographic pole, whose location is determined by the axis on which the Earth spins.) For most of the 20th century, the pole moved about nine miles a year. Then, beginning in the 1990s, it moved about 35 miles a year.</s>The shape of Earth's magnetic field is the result of both the planet's north and south magnetic poles as well as the stream of particles coming from the sun.

Earth's north magnetic pole is on the move, unpredictably lurching away from the Canadian Arctic and toward Siberia. It's wandered so much, that the current representation of the entire globe's magnetic field, just updated in 2015, is now out of date. And so, geologists have come up with a new model.

This updated model, called the World Magnetic Model, was supposed to be published Jan. 15, but it's now been delayed to Jan. 30, on account of the government shutdown.

Once it's made public, the new model will inform a wide array of navigation, including those directing airplanes and ships to people checking Google Maps on their smart devices. [Earth from Above: 101 Stunning Images from Orbit]

The World Magnetic Model is one of a handful of models — another is called the International Geomagnetic Reference Field — that track so-called declination, or the difference between true, or geographic, north (that is, the North Pole) and magnetic north (the point where your compass needle points). Knowing that declination for points across the globe allows one to convert between a magnetic bearing and a true bearing, according to a report on the 2015 model. In that way, ships, aircraft, antennas, drilling equipment and other devices can be oriented.

The latest World Magnetic Model was designed to last until 2020, but magnetic north's rapid and unexpected surge toward Siberia was so great, that researchers had to amend the model early, 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, told Nature.

News of the magnetic north's meanderings isn't exactly new. Researchers figured out in the 1800s that magnetic north tended to drift. Then, in the mid-1990s, it began moving faster, from just over 9 miles (15 kilometers) a year to about 34 miles (55 km) annually, Nature reported. In 2018, magnetic north skipped over the International Date Line and entered the Eastern Hemisphere.

The North Pole’s erratic movements are largely the result of Earth's liquid-iron outer core, known as the core field. (Other factors play a role, too, including magnetic minerals in the crust and upper mantle, as well as electric currents created by the flow of seawater, but these influences are small compared to those from the core field, according to the 2015 report on the World Magnetic Model.)

No one has ever seen the core field, but you can imagine it like this: Picture a bar magnet at the center of the Earth that has two poles: north and south. This magnet represents about 75 percent of the intensity of the Earth's magnetic field at the surface today, said Ronald Merrill, an emeritus professor of Earth and space sciences at the University of Washington, who wasn't involved with the new World Magnetic Model research. (In reality, electric currents and not a giant bar magnet in Earth's core create the magnetic field, but it's easier to think of it in terms of magnets, Merrill said.)

But the intensity of this so-called bar magnet is decreasing over time, by about 7 percent every 100 years, Merrill told Live Science. That bar magnet is also moving right now, so that it's tilted toward Canada at slightly less than 10 degrees, he noted.

The other 25 percent of the magnetic field comes from another field, which can be envisioned as bar magnets that are moving around, Merrill said. In other words, as the giant, central bar magnet loses its intensity, this other magnetic field gains more influence over Earth's magnetic field. "And that's what's causing this field to move in the direction [of Siberia]," Merrill said. [Doomsday: 9 Real Ways Earth Could End]

In fact, the weakening of this giant bar magnet has alarmed some scientists, who wonder if it's a sign that Earth's north and south poles might flip, as they last did about 780,000 years ago. Such a flip wouldn't happen for thousands of years, and it remains to be seen what will happen. But a 2018 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found evidence that Earth's magnetic field has weakened before without flipping.

However, this weakening could lead to a field wobble, which could affect technologies such as electronics aboard low-Earth-orbit satellites, Live Science previously reported.

A roving magnetic north has other implications, too. As it moves, it's likely that the best locations to see the Northern Lights will change over time. "In a hundred years, there might be a better place to see the Northern Lights than there are today," Merrill said.

For now, scientists are trying to figure out exactly why magnetic north is shooting toward Siberia. One idea is that its rapid flight is connected to a high-speed jet of liquid iron under Canada, Nature reported.

It appears that this jet is weakening the magnetic field beneath Canada by smearing it out, which means that Canada doesn't stand a chance against Siberia, Phil Livermore, a geomagnetist at the University of Leeds, in England, told Nature.

"The location of the north magnetic pole appears to be governed by two large-scale patches of magnetic field, one beneath Canada and one beneath Siberia," Livermore told Nature. "The Siberian patch is winning the competition."
• Aurora Photos: See Breathtaking Views of the Northern Lights</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.”
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.