| Geodesy | |
North pole keeps moving south
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| In 1900, the International Latitude Service started to monitor the wobbling and wandering of the North Pole. Since that year, the North Pole has been moving south. In everyday terminology, it has moved secularly on the Earth’s surface in the only direction it knows, i.e., south. The total motion has been about 13.5 meter over the past 100+ years, which in other words amounts to an amazing rate of 13 cm per year or about 1 cm per month. This would mean that South Pole has the “opposite” motion. Checking the data sets further, the 100+ year journey has been a southerly zigzagging sojourn, where at present the Pole’s path is along 333° East Longitude.
From the above, my interpretations are: Changing Latitude – The southerly moving of the North Pole would directly be changing our geodetic latitude by about ± 0.005 arcsec/ year. Of course, if the latitude would increase in an area of the Earth, it would decrease on the corresponding opposite area. Regional Cooling or Warming – From the 14 m total motion in the past century and considering the present rate, it is expected that North Pole would be another 6 to7 m further south over the next 50 years. In the northern hemisphere, this would simply mean that North Pole is closing on towards North America and Greenland and thus should be “cooling” them. For the Siberia, the opposite would be happening. In the southern hemisphere, the South Pole would be moving further north and closing on Australia. Thus, southern Australia would also be “cooling”. For the effect on our “Good Coordinates”, I, as a geodesist, am sure of the interpretation. However, I have a query to the scientists researching global warming whether they have taken into consideration the impact on regional weather due to this natural phenomena. |
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