[SFDXA] A possible explanation for the Earth's North magnetic pole moving toward Russia

[Bill]

  A possible explanation for the Earth's North magnetic pole moving
  toward Russia

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Historical movement and predicted future path of the north magnetic pole 
in stereographic projection. Credit: /Nature Geoscience/ (2020). DOI: 
10.1038/s41561-020-0570-9
A possible explanation for the Earth’s North magnetic pole moving toward 
Russia

A trio of researchers, two with the University of Leeds, the other the 
Technical University of Denmark, has developed a theory to explain why 
Earth's north magnetic pole has been drifting from Canada to Russia. In 
their paper published in the journal /Nature Geoscience/, Philip 
Livermore, Christopher Finlay and Matthew Bayliff describe their theory 
and what their models based on it showed.

The Earth's north magnetic pole was first discovered by an explorer 
named James Clark Ross back in the 1830s. At that time, it was centered 
over the Nunavut territory in Canada. Since that time, scientists have 
kept track of its movement <https://phys.org/tags/movement/>, which, 
until recently, was very slow. But then in the 1990s, it began to pick 
up speed, moving from Canada toward Siberia in Russia. The movement of 
the pole has garnered interest in the media because it forces changes to 
navigational systems and smartphones that use its location as a focal 
point. In this new effort, the researchers have come up with what they 
believe is an explanation for the movement of the pole and why it began 
moving faster.

The researchers suggest that there are two large lobes of negative 
magnetic flux at the boundary of the core and the mantle. They further 
suggest that changes in molten metal flow in the core result in changes 
in the magnetic flux in the lobes. The position of the pole is 
determined by the strength of the two lobes—when one gains strength, the 
other loses strength resulting in the pole moving in the stronger 
direction. The result is a constant tug-of-war between the two lobes. 
The current movement is therefore due to one of the lobes gaining the 
upper hand.

The researchers developed their theory <https://phys.org/tags/theory/> 
after studying 20 years of satellite data (from the European Space 
Agency's Swarm) to measure the evolving shape of the Earth's magnetic 
field. Once they had developed their theory, they built a model that 
matched historical movement of the pole and used it to predict its 
future path. It showed the pole continuing toward Russia at its current 
swift pace before slowing—with the pole <https://phys.org/tags/pole/> 
eventually settling over a part of Siberia. The model was not able to 
provide any estimates for a more distant future.

https://phys.org/news/2020-05-explanation-earth-north-magnetic-pole.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly-nwletter

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