The Magnetic North Pole Is Moving in an Unprecedented Way — and Scientists Are Puzzled

The North Pole most people imagine is a fixed point on the map. But magnetic north is different. It wanders, shifts, accelerates, slows down, and forces scientists to keep updating the models that help planes, ships, satellites, smartphones, and compasses understand direction.

What has puzzled researchers is not just that the magnetic north pole moves, because it always has. The strange part is how dramatically its behavior has changed in recent decades: after spending centuries near Canada, it began racing toward Siberia, then recently slowed in a way scientists described as unusual.