Where Is the Earth's Magnetic Pole Located?

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Brian with ericksontutoring.blogspot.com. Today, we're going to discuss where earth's magnetic pole is located. So first of all, earth has a magnetic field, and there are certain points that are considered poles. So, a pole is simply where the magnetic field is at a 90 degree angle. So, it's pointing straight into the earth. There's a North Pole and a South Pole, and unfortunately, the magnetic north and south are not the same thing as geographic north and south. So, it's not a North Pole where Santa Claus is rumored to live, and it's not the South Pole. Unfortunately, it's just not that simple. In fact, the center of the magnetic field and that's where the magnetic compass is going to point, for the North Pole it's a near place called Ellesmere Island which is in Canada. Ellesmere Island in Canada is located at 82.7 degrees north and 114.4 degrees west. If it were at the geographic North Pole, it would be at 90 degrees north. And it could really be at any longitude that you desired because it would be at the very top. The thing that makes it even trickier is that the north the magnetic North Pole moves. It wanders up to 15 kilometers a year and no one knows completely why it does this, but it wanders. So, the information that I just gave you now maybe out of date by the next couple of years. Magnetic south too is not necessarily at the geographic South Pole and it also is not at a 180 degrees from the North Pole. So, it's not at the exact opposite location on the planet. The reason that magnetic north and magnetic south are worth considering is when you're working with a map and you're trying to go between a compass and a map. If you simply take, if you don't take into account that there's a difference between magnetic and geographic north, you're going to go to the wrong place. Your compass is not going to be pointing to where you think it's pointing. So, a lot of maps tell you something called declination which is simply the degree of difference between magnetic north and geographic north. So, this has been a brief discussion of where earth's magnetic North Pole is located."