CNN: The North pole is moving.

CNN: The North Pole is moving.

The needle on a compass rotates to line up with the magnetic poles of the Earth.  Those poles move, and faster than you’d think.  In the past few decades, the poles have been moving about 30 miles per year.  On the scale of the entire Earth, that may not seem like much, but closer to the poles, it can be critical.

Airport runways are designated by the compass heading.  Those designations have had to be changed on a few runaways because the magnetic poles moved so much.

Maybe you know that there are two North Poles.  Think of the geographic North Pole as the center of spin.  If a globe were to be hung from a string so it can spin, the string would be attached to the geographic pole.  The magnetic poles are the points that a compass points to.

This next part is confusing and nobody likes to talk about it. The South pole of the Earth’s magnet, is near the North geographic pole.  That’s the pole that is heading toward Siberia.  A compass is a tiny magnet with a North and South pole.  The North pole of a magnet is attracted to the South pole of another magnet.  The North pole of a compass needle is attracted to the South pole of Earth’s magnetic field.

Like I said, nobody likes to talk about it, so they just say that the magnetic North pole and the geographic North pole are near each other.  That doesn’t make any sense, but it also doesn’t matter unless the direction of the magnetic field lines are relevant to the situation.