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The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Magnetic North Pole .
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.
Visualization of the ice and snow covering Earth's northern and southern polar regions Northern Hemisphere permafrost (permanently frozen ground) in purple. The polar regions, also called the frigid zones or polar zones, of Earth are Earth's polar ice caps, the regions of the planet that surround its geographical poles (the North and South Poles), lying within the polar circles.
As of early 2019, the magnetic north pole is moving from Canada towards Siberia at a rate of approximately 55 km (34 mi) per year. [19] NOAA gives the 2024 location of the magnetic north pole as 86 degrees North, 142 degrees East. By 2025, it will have drifted to 138 degrees East (same latitude). [20]
The field and the location of the magnetic pole are impacted by variations in the swirling motion of this molten iron, which is located around 2,000 miles below ground.
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.
North and South poles are also defined for other planets or satellites in the Solar System, with a North pole being on the same side of the invariable plane as Earth's North pole. [ 2 ] Relative to Earth's surface, the geographic poles move by a few metres over periods of a few years. [ 3 ]
Like the North Magnetic Pole, the North Geomagnetic Pole attracts the north pole of a bar magnet and so is in a physical sense actually a magnetic south pole. It is the center of the 'open' magnetic field lines which connect to the interplanetary magnetic field and provide a direct route for the solar wind to reach the ionosphere.