World leaders have been warned that civilisation could collapse World leaders have been warned that civilisation could collapse... The Arctic’s melting ice may be having a far deeper impact than expected. We’re seeing large, unexpected shifts in the magnetic north pole. And this could be symptomatic of changes deep within the Earth’s core. But could it also throw the entire planet off balance? As with everything else about the biosphere that is our planet, Earth, the magnetic field is part of a subtly balanced and interlocked system. And series of studies has shown the amount of ice lost off the Greenland landmass was 267 gigatons in 2017. In 1996, it was 97 gigatons. To put that in perspective, a single gigatonne is an ice-cube 1km wide, 1km tall and 1km long. This change has been measured by satellites. Some photograph the melt, others use lasers to measure the height of the ice. Some sense the minute decrease in gravity caused by the loss of mass. RELATED: Weird thing happening to Earth’s ‘shield’ As this ice retreats, ocean currents are changing course. New shipping lanes are being opened to Canada’s north. The salinity of the surrounding sea is being reduced. But it now appears there is more going on. Greenland isn’t as heavy as it was. This means the pressure it applied to the veins of magma pulsing deep below the Earth’s surface has reduced. And this swirling mass of molten iron is shifting. Faster. In new directions. This could account for the highly erratic shift in the position of magnetic north. But it also could give the whole planet an unexpected shake-up. ‘TRUE POLAR WANDER’ This pale blue dot wandering through space is locked in an internal feedback loop. What happens to one aspect of this little world affects another, which — in turn — affects another. A 2018 study in the science journal Geophysical Research Letters examined fossil signatures found deep in ocean sediments around the Hawaiian Islands. It suggests the Earth’s magnetic field isn’t the only thing to occasionally undergo a dramatic shift. The same can be said of the Earth’s surface. “The Hawaiian hot spot was fixed, relative to the spin axis, from about 48 million years ago to about 12 million years ago, but it was fixed at a latitude farther north than we find it today,” said Daniel Woodworth, a graduate student of Rice University. “By comparing the Hawaiian hot spot to the rest of the Earth, we can see that shift in location was reflected in the rest of the Earth and is superimposed on the motion of tectonic plates. That tells us that the entire Earth moved, relative to the spin axis, which we interpret to be true polar wander.” Essentially, the Earth’s surface was thrown off-kilter. And that was probably caused by a magma ‘blob’ in the mantle beneath the crust. Generally, everything is kept relatively consistent by the balancing effect of Earth’s rotational centrifugal force. But not always. Magma flows can shift. Its consistency in certain places can change. “Imagine you have really, really cold syrup, and you’re putting it on hot pancakes,” Gordon, the W.M. Keck Professor of Rice University’s Earth, Environmental and Planetary Science said. “As you pour it, you temporarily have a little pile in the centre, where it doesn’t instantly flatten out because of the viscosity of the cold syrup. We think the dense anomalies in the mantle are like that little temporary pile, only the viscosities are much higher in the lower mantle. Like the syrup, it will eventually deform, but it takes a really, really long time to do so.” If these magma blobs are big enough, they can unsettle the planet’s spin. While the Earth’s angle relative to the Sun doesn’t change, the position of the continents does. Essentially, centrifugal force pulls this ‘blob’ of magma closer to the equator. From the perspective of the continents, the equator appears to shift. The study said the last time this happened about 3.2 million years ago, it moved Greenland and parts of Europe and North America further north. “That may have triggered what we call the ice age,” Professor Gordon said. GEOLOGICAL PRESSURE COOKER Less than 100 years ago, the idea that the Earth’s continents could shift position was considered ludicrous. But the discovery of plate tectonics changed that virtually overnight. The Earth’s outer crust is a system of solid plates floating on a mantle of highly pressurised, superhot rock beneath. These cycle constantly, as do the continents they contain, through the tectonic forces expressed through volcanoes and earthquakes. It may just be a matter of a few centimetres each year. But it's already been enough for the GPS network to have to be reset to avoid navigational errors. It’s easy to forget the driving force for all of this as it is far, far out of sight. The ebb and flow of the molten metals of the Earth’s mantle and core. As our planet rotates around its axis, this liquid iron is churned. And that’s a good thing. The constant interaction of iron on iron generates electric currents that power the magnetic field that shields the surface of the Earth. This ‘bounces’ the worst of the Sun’s radiation, and even powerful cosmic rays. Likewise there is a constant interaction between the molten core and the solid crust. Magma can pool, shift and cool as the crust above changes. RELATED: Greenland impact crater could explain mammoth extinction It can result in areas becoming more — or less — dense in magnetic material. And it can affect the circulation of molten magma around it. Such changes could account for mysteries such as the powerful South Atlantic magnetic anomaly that has claimed several satellites in recent years. It also changes the ‘balance’ of the Earth’s magnetic field, causing the location of the North and South poles to ‘wander’. They can even ‘flip’. “In other words, if you were alive about 800,000 years ago, and facing what we call north with a magnetic compass in your hand, the needle would point to ‘south’,” A NASA commentary reads. But the implication now is the balance of the Earth’s crust itself can be unsettled if the magma below shifts and changes in unexpected ways. ANTARCTIC WILDCARD Just as the tectonic plates react to shifts in Greenland’s weight, so too will they be affected by Antarctica. And ice is melting in Antarctica faster than ever before — about six times more per year now than 40 years ago. As this ice sits on land, the run-off is leading to increasingly high sea levels worldwide. Already, Antarctic melting has raised global sea levels more than 1.4 centimetres between 1979 and 2017, a report in this week’s edition of the science journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). RELATED: Something weird’s happening deep beneath the South Atlantic A rise of 1.8 metres by 2100, as some scientists forecast in worst-case scenarios, would flood many coastal cities that are home to millions of people around the world, previous research has shown. It would also greatly reduce the weight of ice sitting on Antarctica, and redistribute that weight on the ocean floor — and the magma beneath. For the current study, researchers embarked on the longest-ever assessment of ice mass in the Antarctic, across 18 geographic regions. Data came from high-resolution aerial photographs taken by NASA planes, along with satellite radar from multiple space agencies. Researchers discovered that from 1979 to 1990, Antarctica shed an average of 40 billion tons of ice mass annually. By the years 2009 to 2017, the ice loss had increased more than sixfold, to 252 billion tons per year. EXPLORE MORE: Why we are obsessed with apocalypse Even more worrying, researchers found that areas that were once considered “stable and immune to change” in East Antarctica, are shedding quite a lot of ice, too, said the study. The total amount of ice in the Antarctic, if it all melted, would be enough to raise sea level 57 metres.<doc-sep>Earth's magnetic fields are shifting - and scientists are unsure why. Researchers say the magnetic North Pole is 'skittering' away from Canada, towards Siberia. The problem has got so bad, researchers around the world are scrambling to update a global model of the fields, according to Nature. Called the World Magnetic Model, it underlies all modern navigation, from the systems that steer ships at sea to Google Maps on smartphones. Scroll down for video The charts, known as the World Magnetic Model (WMM), are used to convert between compass measurements of magnetic north and true north WHY ARE THE EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELDS MOVING? The problem lies partly with the moving pole and partly with other shifts deep within the planet. Liquid churning in Earth's core generates most of the magnetic field, which varies over time as the deep flows change. In 2016, for instance, part of the magnetic field temporarily accelerated deep under northern South America and the eastern Pacific Ocean. Satellites such as the European Space Agency's Swarm mission tracked the shift. Advertisement The most recent version of the model came out in 2015, and it was supposed to last until 2020. However, researchers say the magnetic field is changing so rapidly that they have to fix the model urgently. It was due to be updated on the 15th January, but due to the US Government shutdown, that has already been delayed until the 30th. '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. 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 magnetic field is in a permanent state of flux. Magnetic north wanders, and every few hundred thousand years the polarity flips so that a compass would point south instead of north. 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.' 'The error is increasing all the time,' 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. 'In early 2018, as part of our regular assessment of the WMM, we found that the model exceeded its specification for declination only three years into the five-year WMM cycle,' he told the American Geophysical Union meeting. 'We investigated this error and tracked it down to the combined effect of a global geomagnetic acceleration pulse occurring in 2015-2016, and a fast-changing magnetic field in the North polar area. 'A remarkable manifestation of the field variation is the drift of the North magnetic pole towards Russia, which has been occurring at the unusually high speed of about 50 km per year since the beginning of the 21st century. 'On the contrary, the South magnetic pole drift is very slow (less than 10 km per year) and has not changed much over the past few decades, and hence provided a much smaller contribution to the overall model declination error.' The team say the new model should remain accurate until the next regularly scheduled update in 2020. Satellites such as the European Space Agency's Swarm mission tracked the shift. WHAT IS THE WORLD MAGNETIC MODEL? The charts, known as the World Magnetic Model (WMM), are used to convert between compass measurements of magnetic north and true north and can be found in the navigation systems of ships and airplanes as well as geological applications (such as drilling and mining). The WMM is also part of map applications in smartphones, including the Google Maps App. Researchers from the U.S.'s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maintain the WMM. 'Although GPS is a great tool for navigation, it is limited in that it only provides your position,' geodetic scientist James Friederich from the U. S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency explained in 2014. 'Your orientation, the direction you are facing, comes from the magnetic field.' 'Our war fighters use magnetics to orient their maps. 'Your smartphone camera and various apps can use the magnetic field to help determine the direction you are facing,' he continued. 'All of these examples need the WMM to provide your proper orientation.' Advertisement Scientists in recent years have predicted that Earth's magnetic field could be gearing up to 'flip' – a shift in which the magnetic south pole would become magnetic north, and vice versa. Such an event could have catastrophic effects, wreaking havoc on the electric grid and leaving life at the surface exposed to higher amounts of solar radiation. While it's previously been thought that these reversals take place at intervals of hundreds of thousands of years, one recent study suggests it could happen in just a matter of centuries. Scientists in recent years have predicted that Earth's magnetic field could be gearing up to 'flip' – a shift in which the magnetic south pole would become magnetic north, and vice versa. Earth's magnetic field is illustrated above Scientists estimate Earth's North and South magnetic poles flip every 200,000-300,000 years. But, it's been roughly 780,000 years since the last such event, causing many to suspect we're overdue. When the magnetic poles flip, Earth's protective magnetic field weakens, leaving its inhabitants at higher risk from the effects of space weather. WHAT COULD HAPPEN TO EARTH IF ITS POLES FLIPPED? The Earth’s magnetic field is in a permanent state of change. Magnetic north drifts around and every few hundred thousand years the polarity flips so a compass would point south instead of north. The strength of the magnetic field also constantly changes and currently it is showing signs of significant weakening. Life has existed on the Earth for billions of years, during which there have been many reversals. There is no obvious correlation between animal extinctions and those reversals. Likewise, reversal patterns do not have any correlation with human development and evolution. It appears that some animals, such as whales and some birds use Earth's magnetic field for migration and direction finding. Since geomagnetic reversal takes a number of thousands of years, they could well adapt to the changing magnetic environment or develop different methods of navigation. Radiation at ground level would increase, however, with some estimates suggesting that overall exposure to cosmic radiation would double causing more deaths from cancer. ‘But only slightly,’ said Professor Richard Holme. ‘And much less than lying on the beach in Florida for a day. So if it happened, the protection method would probably be to wear a big floppy hat.’ The movement of the Earth's magnetic poles are shown in this animation at 10-year intervals from 1970 to 2020. The red and blue lines sjpw the difference between magnetic north and true north depending on where you are standing. On the green line, a compass would point to true north. Credit: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information Electric grid collapse from severe solar storms is a major risk. As the magnetic field continues to weaken, scientists are highlighting the importance off-the grid energy systems using renewable energy sources to protect the Earth against a black out. 'The very highly charged particles can have a deleterious effect on the satellites and astronauts,' added Dr Mona Kessel, a Magnetosphere discipline scientist at Nasa. I n one area, there is evidence that a flip is already occurring. ‘The increasing strength of the South Atlantic anomaly, an area of weak field over Brazil, is already a problem,’ said Professor Richard Holme. The Earth's climate could also change. A recent Danish study has found that the earth's weather has been significantly affected by the planet's magnetic field.<doc-sep>Earth’s magnetic field, the basis for modern global navigation systems, is constantly in some state of flux. However, it now seems to be going haywire, pushing the North Pole closer to Siberia, and no one’s sure why. The field changes as the molten metals surrounding the earth’s solid iron core churn and flow, creating electric currents and a corresponding magnetic field. As a result, the magnetic poles tend to shift slightly as a matter of course. However, researchers don’t know what’s causing the magnetic field to now move so quickly. Read more The north magnetic pole sped across the International Date Line last year at a rate of 55 km per year, more than three times as fast as it moved before the mid-1990s. Now located in the Eastern Hemisphere, it’s moving away from Canada and approaching Siberia. Scientists think a high-speed jet of liquid iron under Canada could be responsible for the pole’s movement, weakening the magnetic field below and allowing Siberia to draw over the pole, Nature reports. “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,” University of Leeds geomagnetist Phil Livermore told a recent American Geophysical Union meeting. “The Siberian patch is winning the competition.” In general, the World Magnetic Model (WMM) is updated at five-year intervals to ensure modern navigation keeps up with the changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. It was due to be reconfigured next in 2020, but was so out-of-whack by 2018 that a more urgent update was needed. Also on rt.com Aliens phoning home? Mysterious deep-space radio signals are more frequent than we thought Researchers at the British Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been working to correct the WMM using three years of recent data, including a 2016 pulse that threw their last model’s accuracy off. The scientists were due to release the latest update next week – if the US government hadn’t shut down, hamstringing NOAA’s operations. Now the release has been postponed to the end of January. The team hopes this model lasts until 2020. If you like this story, share it with a friend!<doc-sep>
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. Core message 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.