The North Pole is Running Away, But Not as Fast

Movement of magnetic North and South poles 1945-2000 (image from Wikimedia) 17 August 2026 Yesterday I described how rock pigeons and rock lobsters navigate using earth’s magnetic field. Behind the scenes I learned how much the magnetic North pole has moved recently. I hadn’t noticed because I no longer use a manual compass that has to be manually adjusted for the local declination. Suunto Compass (from Suunto Watches) World Magnetic Map showing declination from true north (from NOAA World Magnetic Model products) Here’s how the poles have moved in an animation showing 1590 to 2025. Each pole is depicted as a green dot. The red, green and blue lines are magnetic 0° and declinations. The years 1590-1830 were backwards calculated. NOAA Magnetic Pole Shift 1590-2025, from NCEI Historical Magnetic Declination Viewer, NCEI Geomagnetism interactive map Notice that the magnetic South pole used to move relatively fast but in the 2000s the magnetic North pole sped up considerably! By 2019 when…