Could this be a precursor to a full-fledged magnetic excursion?
James Clark Ross first identified the magnetic pole on the Boothia Peninsula in Canada’s Nunavut territory in 1831, and scientists have been carefully measuring its location ever since.
While the poles have drifted and even swapped places numerous times over the long course of Earth’s history, what’s different is how quickly this shift is happening. From 1999 to 2005, Earth’s magnetic north pole went from shifting 9 miles – at most -each year to as much as 37 miles in a year.
Photo credit – Livermore et al – Nature Geoscience 2020
The movement has been so rapid that the British Geological Survey and U.S. National Geophysical Data Center, which update the World’s Magnetic Model, had to accelerate their process in order to keep up.
These shifts have major consequences for global navigation systems – compasses, ships at sea, smart phones – all are impacted by this magnetic game of tug-o-war.
Could this accelerating movement be a precursor to a full-fledged magnetic excursion? I have no idea. However, magnetic reversal or not, researchers from U.K. and Denmark say they’ve uncovered the reason for the mysterious movement: Two writhing massive blobs on molten iron in Earth’s outer core.
The researchers paper appeared in the May 15 issue of Nature Geoscience.
See all of Jennifer’s article about the “writing blobs”:
Thanks to David Dean for this link