Movement of magnetic North and South poles 1945-2000 (image from Wikimedia)

17 August 2026

Yesterday I described how rock pigeons and rock lobsters navigate using earth’s magnetic field. Behind the scenes I learned how much the magnetic North pole has moved recently. I hadn’t noticed because I no longer use a manual compass that has to be manually adjusted for the local declination.

Suunto Compass (from Suunto Watches)

World Magnetic Map showing declination from true north (from NOAA World Magnetic Model products)

Here’s how the poles have moved in an animation showing 1590 to 2025. Each pole is depicted as a green dot. The red, green and blue lines are magnetic 0° and declinations. The years 1590-1830 were backwards calculated.

Notice that the magnetic South pole used to move relatively fast but in the 2000s the magnetic North pole sped up considerably!

By 2019 when this video (below) was created, magnetic north had moved more than 2,300 km (1,430 mi) from northern Canada toward Siberia.

How fast did it go? Seven years ago it was moving 55km/year (34.17 miles/year) but predicted to slow down.

Magnetic North speed 1900-2019 from Wikimedia

And so it has:

The magnetic north pole is moving at a current speed of about 35-45 km (22-28 mi) per year toward Siberia. Its speed has slowed down recently after peaking at around 55 km (34 mi) per year in the early 2000s.

One last video from 2019, slightly redundant, that also explains how our GPS mapping apps are just fine.

Our satellites and cellphones make it easy for us. I wonder how the rock pigeons and rock lobsters cope with it.