Though they sound scary, pole flips can take a long time to occur and pose no immediate threat. Celebrate science by becoming a citizen scientist with NCEI.
Several scientific projects we host benefit from public. Magnetic navigation has continued to improve. The CrowdMag app, which. Published March 28, Interest in these unexpected jolts is about more than mapping. The dance of Earth's magnetic field lines presents one of the few windows scientists have to processes that happen thousands of miles below your feet. The north magnetic pole seems to be controlled by two patches of magnetic field, he explains, one under northern Canada and one under Siberia.
Historically, the one under northern Canada seems to have been stronger, keeping the magnetic pole in its clutches. But recently, that seems to have changed. This may be a result of a jet within the core smearing and thus weakening the magnetic field under Canada, he says. The jet's increase in speed seems to have coincided with the last few decades of the magnetic pole zipping north. But he cautions about jumping to any definite conclusions. It's tough to predict what will happen to the magnetic north pole—or whether it's even going to maintain its speed as it staggers toward Siberia, notes Robyn Fiori , a research scientist with Natural Resources Canada.
The only thing that seems certain about magnetic north is its unpredictability. Rocks hold geologic maps of even weirder movements of the magnetic poles, suggesting that in the last 20 million years, magnetic north and south have flipped places multiple times.
This seems to happen roughly every , to , years. The exact causes behind these reversals remains uncertain. But the latest movement shouldn't have you in knots about an imminent flip.
Here's what we know. Models of magnetic north suggest that this latest leap isn't even the strangest thing the pole has done in more recent history, Fiori adds.
Before , its wanderings likely once had a lot more wiggle and may include several hairpin turns in northern Canada that could have sent the pole on a brief southward stint. It's therefore hard to say if magnetic north's newfound speed is the new normal. What we know is what it's doing now is different, and that's always exciting scientifically. All rights reserved. The types of navigation that can benefit from the new model have also been updated, and the spelling of Arnaud Chulliat's name has been corrected.
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Earth's magnetic field has flipped dozens of times in the past 2. Scientists know the last reversal took place during the Stone Age, but they have little information about the duration of this phenomenon and when the next "flip" might occur. In the new study, the researchers relied on flow sequences of lava that erupted close to or during the last reversal, to measure its duration.
Using this method, they estimated that the reversal lasted 22, years — much longer than the previous estimates of 1, to 10, years. While conducting studies on a volcano in Chile in , Singer stumbled upon one of the lava-flow sequences that recorded part of the reversal process. While trying to date the lava, Singer noticed odd, transitional magnetic-field directions in the lava-flow sequences.
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