A movement with unexpected characteristics in Earth’s magnetism has scientists around the world intrigued. And it is that in recent years it has been moving away from Canada and heading towards Siberia, Russia. Scrolling has been so fast that it has forced more frequent updates to GPS navigation systems, including those that use the maps of our smartphones.
Earth has three poles at its top.
• A geographic pole, which is where the planet’s axis of rotation intersects the surface.
• The geomagnetic pole is the location that best suits a classic dipole (its position changes little).
• And then there is the magnetic North Pole, which is where the field lines are perpendicular to the surface. This is the one that has been moving..
Due to its core made of liquid metal, the Earth works like a huge magnet with positive and negative poles. The magnetic field is a “layer” of forces around the planet between these two poles. This layer is called the magnetosphere, and it is extremely important to life on Earth.
“It is the magnetic field that protects us from particles that come from outside, especially from the solar wind (which can be very harmful),” explains geologist Ricardo Ferreira Trindade, researcher at the Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics at the University of São Paulo (USP).
Most of the magnetic field is generated by the movement of the liquid metals that make up the center of the planet. As the flow varies, the field changes. The point, according to Trindade, is that in the last ten years it has “varied at a much greater speed than it did in the past.”
Changes in the flows of melted material inside the planet have altered the strength of the areas of negative magnetic flux. “This change in the flow pattern has weakened the part below Canada and slightly increased the strength of the patch below Siberia,” explained Dr. Phil Livermore.
That is why the North Pole has left its historic position on the Canadian Arctic and has crossed the International Date Line.
Will progress slow down? “No one knows whether or not it will back down in the future,” British scientist Phil Livermore told him. The team’s latest model indicates that the pole will continue to advance towards Russia, but at some point, it will begin to decline. At his maximum speed, he has been driving 50-60 km a year.
The recent polo race led to the US National Center for Geophysical Data. and the British Geological Survey to issue an early update to the World Magnetic Model last year.
