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The north magnetic pole, also known as the magnetic north pole, is a point on the surface of Earth's Northern Hemisphere at which the planet's magnetic field points vertically downward (in other words, if a magnetic compass needle is allowed to rotate in three dimensions, it will point straight down).
N g is geographic or true north, N m is magnetic north, and δ is magnetic declination. 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.
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]
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.
On the one hand, this magnetic shield is responsible for life forming on Earth in the first place, as it protects the surface from most of the Sun’s harmful UV rays.
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.
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 direction of the field determines whether the pole is a magnetic north or south pole, exactly as on Earth. The Earth's magnetic axis is approximately aligned with its rotational axis, meaning that the geomagnetic poles are relatively close to the geographic poles. However, this is not necessarily the case for other planets; the magnetic ...