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Compass needles in the Northern Hemisphere point toward the magnetic North Pole, although the exact location of it changes from time to time as the contours of Earth’s magnetic field also change.
Magnetic declination (also called magnetic variation) is the angle between magnetic north and true north at a particular location on the Earth's surface. The angle can change over time due to polar wandering .
As a result, magnetic north is always changing, and since its discovery in 1831, it has moved roughly 680 miles toward Siberia from its originally documented location.
The Earth's Magnetic North Pole is actually considered the "south pole" in terms of a typical magnet, meaning that the north pole of a magnet would be attracted to the Earth's Magnetic North Pole. [2] The north magnetic pole moves over time according to magnetic changes and flux lobe elongation [3] in the Earth's outer core. [4]
British explorer Sir James Clark Ross discovered the magnetic north pole in 1831 in northern Canada, approximately 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) south of the true North Pole.
If the Earth's magnetic fields were exactly dipolar, the north pole of a magnetic compass needle would point directly at the North Geomagnetic Pole. In practice, it does not because the geomagnetic field that originates in the core has a more complex non-dipolar part, and magnetic anomalies in the Earth's crust also contribute to the local ...
The Earth's magnetic north pole is drifting from northern Canada towards Siberia with a presently accelerating rate—10 kilometres (6.2 mi) per year at the beginning of the 1900s, up to 40 kilometres (25 mi) per year in 2003, [26] and since then has only accelerated. [51] [52]
This liquid metal moves as a result of heat escaping from the planet's core, creating the Earth's magnetic field. The field and the location of the magnetic pole are impacted by variations in the ...