Earth's Magnetic Shift

[Ron in Regina]

OK. It was something I'd read (don't remember much about it, to be honest) maybe 20yrs
ago. It was interesting at the time. If the North Pole was located in what is now the Sudan,
Africa's climate (weather...whatever) might have been very different than it is now, as would
have been whatever is opposite that on the globe (wherever the South Pole would have been)
I would suspect. The weight of the ice in the Sudan results in its current elevation (or lack of)
with respect to the current sea level...if that theory was valid.

 

[DaSleeper]

The shifting of the continents must have created quite a wobble eons ago;-)

 

[damngrumpy]

I really didn't pay that much attention in science to all of this and I find the subject fascinating.
Keep the information coming, I am learning a lot from the discussions. Does this explains
weather patterns that change the climate or the climate that changes the weather patterns?
What are the repercussions of this in effecting the weather and climates of the future?
As you can see I am not well versed in this and its what makes it interesting.

 

[Tonington]

OK. It was something I'd read (don't remember much about it, to be honest) maybe 20yrs
ago. It was interesting at the time. If the North Pole was located in what is now the Sudan,
Africa's climate (weather...whatever) might have been very different than it is now, as would
have been whatever is opposite that on the globe (wherever the South Pole would have been)
I would suspect. The weight of the ice in the Sudan results in its current elevation (or lack of)
with respect to the current sea level...if that theory was valid.

No, see this is the problem others are having... the polar ice sheets are where they are, not because of the magnetic pole location, but because of where they are in relation to the surface of our globe planet, and the angle of incoming solar rays. When the polar surface of the planet is facing away from the sun, there is less radiation hitting the surface per unit area. It's called insolation. The poles are angled away from the sun in the hemispheric winters, and receive very little sunlight, none above the Arctic and Antarctic circles. This makes it cold enough to sustain ice caps, ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice, etc.

If one of the magnetic poles is in Sudan, which is near the equator, there won't be any ice, unless the entire planet is in a snowball phase. Otherwise, the incoming solar radiation doesn't really change, except there could be more ionizing radiation.

Perhaps we should refer to this as the magnetic dipole. Maybe that will help people to keep concepts separated.

 

[Ron in Regina]

I really didn't pay that much attention in science to all of this and I find the subject fascinating.
Keep the information coming, I am learning a lot from the discussions. Does this explains
weather patterns that change the climate or the climate that changes the weather patterns?
What are the repercussions of this in effecting the weather and climates of the future?
As you can see I am not well versed in this and its what makes it interesting.

I'm in the same boat damngrumpy.

 

[taxslave]

About all I remember about science is cutting up dead frogs and watching kids pass out doing blood typing. And I once turned an entire counter into a sheet of flame by turning the gas jets on and letting a lit test tube cruise down the counter. Gr.9 I think.

 

[damngrumpy]

Here is something that has always puzzled me. Why is the South pole so much colder
on average than the North Pole? For centuries it would seem the south has not lost its
ice accumulation, at least not at the same rate as the north. Is that because there is more
ice on the South Pole, and if so why more in the south? From expedition films etc, I have
always thought the South Pole is a more Foreboding place. Am I right or is this mere
perception on my part? It just seems to me the North Pole is subject to less intense cold
and more fluctuation in warm temperatures is that true? Could it be that all the stuff about
CO2 and other issues are not correct? Is it the poles on the planets surface that changes
everything?

 

[Ron in Regina]

No, see this is the problem others are having... the polar ice sheets are where they are, not because of the magnetic pole location, but because of where they are in relation to the surface of our globe planet, and the angle of incoming solar rays. When the polar surface of the planet is facing away from the sun, there is less radiation hitting the surface per unit area. It's called insolation. The poles are angled away from the sun in the hemispheric winters, and receive very little sunlight, none above the Arctic and Antarctic circles. This makes it cold enough to sustain ice caps, ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice, etc.

If one of the magnetic poles is in Sudan, which is near the equator, there won't be any ice, unless the entire planet is in a snowball phase. Otherwise, the incoming solar radiation doesn't really change, except there could be more ionizing radiation.

Perhaps we should refer to this as the magnetic dipole. Maybe that will help people to keep concepts separated.

Like I was saying earlier above, I seem to remember reading (& perhaps it's a theory that
has since been disproven) that the actual ice sheet (not just the magnetic pole) was located
at different times, at different places on the Earths surface, and the correlation was the
depressions at these locations (due to the weight of the ice) and the iron particals in lava that
(when it cooled) orientated to point at these locations being snap-shots in time pointing to
these depressions.

Pick the orientation from the lava flows iron, all at a specific era, draw lines from them, and they
would pin-point major depressions in the Earths surface where not only the magnetic pole was
located at that time, but....the theory was the polar ice cap too. The weight of such leaving the
depressions we find today.

Like I was saying, that was read a couple decades back and the only two I can remember off
hand where the Sudan and what is now Hudson's Bay, though others where listed.

Whatever though....it's all interesting. Makes one wonder if the concepts are seperate, eh?

 

[Tonington]

Here is something that has always puzzled me. Why is the South pole so much colder
on average than the North Pole?

There's a couple reasons. First, it's surrounded by water. Water has a higher heat capacity than land, which means that it takes more heat to change the temperature of 1 gram of water than it does to change the temperature of 1 gram of earth, by the same amount. In the Northern Hemisphere, land predominates, while the Southern Hemisphere is mostly water. So more heat is stored in the ocean, and the temperatures are cooler in the South Pole.

Another reason, is that there has been a persistent atmospheric condition over the Antarctic continent that makes the poleward transport of heat far more difficult. It's called the Southern Annular Mode, it's the southerly cousin of those images and posts that Avro has been posting in other threads explaining why parts of Europe and Eurasia have been so abnormally cold this winter, while parts of Northern and Eastern Canada have been so warm.

It's been in a more positive phase lately, and this makes strong Westerly winds which impedes warmer air from reaching the continent. This is also taking place while ozone depletion, and building carbon dioxide cool the stratosphere. It's called stratospheric cooling, and it's actually one of the global fingerprints we have that point towards an enhanced greenhouse effect as the cause of our climate change. The solar radiation that bounces off the planet, and is radiated by the planet moves back towards space. Along the way, greenhouse gas absorb, and re-emit that radiation, some of it moves back down in the atmosphere. When you add more greenhouse gases, there is less radiation escaping to space, so the layer of atmosphere above must cool.

Anyways, the cooling in the stratosphere over Antarctica creates a big change in temperature vertically, which helps produce a stronger vortex over Antarctica. Stronger Westerlies make it very difficult for warm systems of air to move into the continent.

 

[Ron in Regina]

If one of the magnetic poles is in Sudan, which is near the equator, there won't be any ice, unless the entire planet is in a snowball phase. Otherwise, the incoming solar radiation doesn't really change, except there could be more ionizing radiation.

Just tried Google, and found this: Expanded Discussion of the HAB Theory

It might have been this (or something like it) that I read a couple decades back.
Like I was saying above, perhaps it's a theory that's since been disproven. This
was pre-Internet times for me (& much of the population) so it must have come
from a book or a magazine. I don't recall, to be honest.

Here's some of the other locations that I couldn't recall above:



In the present geologic epoch, called the Pleistocene (of the Quaternary Period and Cenozoic Era), which, in essence, takes in the past one million years, many hundreds of capsizings have occurred. A partial listing of some of the more important and obvious ice-cap sites during the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras can include:

• The Gobi Desert;
• Lake Victoria:
• Mar Chiquita in Argentina;
• The Black Sea;
• Death Valley, California;
• The Amazon Valley;
• Baikal Lake in the USSR;
• Lake Winnipeg;
• The Null Arbor Plain in Australia's southwest;
• Baffin Bay;
• The Baltic Sea;
• The Congo Basin;
• The Mediterranean Sea,
• Great Bear Lake, Canada;
• Great Salt Lake, Utah;
• The Thar Desert in northwest in India;
• Aral Sea, Uzbek, USSR;
• The Painted Desert- Lakes Michigan-Huron-Superior;
• The Angola Basin off the coast of western Africa;
• The Bighorn Basin, Wyoming;
• In northeastern Siberia in the vicinity of Tabor
• The Takla Makan Desert north of the Himalayas;
• The Canary Basin off the northwestern African coast;
• Great Slave Lake, Canada;
• The Argentine Basin 930 miles southeast of Buenos Aires;
• The Wharton Basin, 900 miles south of Djakarta.

This is just one of close to 60,000 hits I got when I Googled: Lake Chad former North Pole?

 

[Tonington]

Oh, that's definitely true, but the continents weren't arranged as they are now. Sudan for instance wasn't where Sudan is now.

During the late Cambrian period, the first period of the Paleozoic era, Earth looked like this:

And during the Jurassic, the second period of the Mesozoic era, Earth looked like this:

At one point, Antarctica was at the equator. Sudan was in the polar region, China was in the polar region.

As the period of time becomes larger, like millions of years as opposed to thousands, thousands as opposed to decades, there are different climate forcings which become more important and less important. Over millions of years, continental arrangement is very important.

 

[DaSleeper]

I first thought this was another global warming thread........my bad

I would have thought so to, if it was posted by Petros or DrunkBeaver.

Turns out we may both have been right with that first thought...

Another one in the works;-)

 

[damngrumpy]

Thanks for the explanaition, I have some understanding of how this works. The planet
is ever changing

 

[Tonington]

Turns out we may both have been right with that first thought...

Another one in the works;-)

What's one more now?

Hey, at least in this we aren't all bickering. At least not yet...:lol:

 

[lone wolf]

Naw.... I remember ol' Gert explaining why declination on our topographic maps at school was a bit different over the years - and that was in Grade Seven, so it's been going on for a while ;-)

 

[Ron in Regina]

At one point, Antarctica was at the equator. Sudan was in the polar region, China was in the polar region.

As the period of time becomes larger, like millions of years as opposed to thousands, thousands as opposed to decades, there are different climate forcings which become more important and less important. Over millions of years, continental arrangement is very important.

Ahhh...OK. That makes sense. Thanks.

 

[Tonington]

Naw.... I remember ol' Gert explaining why declination on our topographic maps at school was a bit different over the years - and that was in Grade Seven, so it's been going on for a while ;-)

Probably since the Earth had a core

Ahhh...OK. That makes sense. Thanks.

My pleasure.

 

[Ron in Regina]

My pleasure.

Does that also explain (the moving continents) why iron in Lava flows from
different eras are orientated to point at these depressions still? Has that
also been proven to be caused by something else, or disproven completely?

 

[Tonington]

Does that also explain (the moving continents) why iron in Lava flows from
different eras are orientated to point at these depressions still? Has that
also been proven to be caused by something else, or disproven completely?

When the iron in the lava is liquid, it aligns itself along the dipole. After it hardens it's there for geologists, paleo-scientists and other geoscientists to extract useful information from.

 

[lone wolf]

This site hosts stuff dated 1994:

Tracking The Magnetic North Pole

If the OP's rate of change is 40k/year, they're right.... It IS speeding up.

Does the magnetic pole have an elliptic track?