Earth's Magnetic Field Is Up To Some Seriously Weird Stuff And No One Knows Why

Tom Hale
11 Jan 2019, 16:07

The planet’s magnetic field is up to mischief again and geologists are pretty dumbfounded.

Earth’s magnetic poles can wander several kilometers every year, however, the north pole's movement has become increasingly stranger in recent years. For reasons that are currently unclear, the magnetic north pole seems to be increasingly slipping away from Canada and towards Siberia at an erratic rate, according to a news report in 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,” Phil Livermore, a geomagnetist at the University of Leeds in the UK said at the latest American Geophysical Union meeting, according to Nature.

“The Siberian patch is winning the competition.”

Every five years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maps out the Earth’s magnetic field in the World Magnetic Model (WMM). This was last published in 2015, with the next edition planned for 2020, but this freak behavior forced scientists to revise the map earlier than anticipated. Unfortunately, the revamped WMM was supposed to be released on January 15, but it's been postponed until at least January 30 due to the ongoing government shutdown.

More:
https://www.iflscience.com/environment/earths-magnetic-field-is-up-to-some-seriously-weird-stuff-and-no-one-knows-why-/