According to a January 11, 2019 report from Will Brown of the BGS Geomagnetic Team at British Geological Survey, the earth’s geomagnetic poles, namely the magnetic north, are migrating at a much faster rate than predicted. At such a rate that scientists have had to update the World Magnetic Model much earlier than expected. The model is routinely updated every five years, but due to unpredicted rapid migration of the magnetic north, an update was requested by the US military ahead of the five year update, which was due at the end of 2020. Due to the government shutdown, the US update that was scheduled for January 15 of this month has been postponed until January 30th (it is unclear to me if this is a tentative date that is dependant on the reopening of the government or not).
According to Brown, the WMM is a is a joint effort from BGS and the US’ NOAA NCEI, on behalf of the UK’s Defence Geographic Centre and the US’ National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. NATO, the US Department of Defense and Military, and the UK’s military all rely on the World Magnetic Model for accurate ship, flight, and submarine navigation. For a better understanding of how it works and our dependence on it, Brown gives an excellent explanation here.
Why should this matter to us, you ask? The World Magnetic Model is the combined scientific data which all Global Positioning (GPS) Systems rely on for accurate ship, flight, and submarine navigation and which we rely on in our cars and on our smart phones on a daily basis for directions. While the rapid shift is unlikely to be noticeable to us in our daily navigation for those of us South of the Arctic region, the Arctic region is greatly affected by this shift. In a recent Reuters report on the subject, which interviewed Ciaran Beggan of the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, Beggan told Reuters, “It’s moving at about 50 km a year. It didn’t move much between 1900 and 1980 but it’s really accelerated in the past 40 years”. Wow, 50 km per year is approximately 31 miles. That’s quite significant.
The reason I share this here at DailyKos (aside form the fact that it was under-reported in the US) is that this is yet another area of vital government and national security in which the shutdown is adversely affecting America. The vast implications of the current shutdown have already set us back considerably and affected the lives of thousands of Americans and the economy as a whole but sadly, this is just the beginning; what has already been done will affect us in ways that we can’t even grasp yet. These problems will continue to surface and become more pronounced the longer the shutdown continues. While there was no real crisis at the border to justify Trump’s wall, he is creating an enormous crisis by shutting down vital areas of government and putting lives and livelihoods at risk in doing so.
Note: In researching this issue, I also came across some academic studies citing climate change and human environmental impact in relation to the magnetic pole shift, which I can write about in the future if there is an interest here.