Australian Broadcasting Corp reports:
From 1982 to 2005, we measured the location of the North Pole as drifting slowly southwards towards Labrador around six to seven centimetres each year.
But in 2005, the North Pole suddenly, and without any warning, did two new things. First, it chucked a leftie and started heading east, parallel to the Equator. Second, the North Pole more than tripled its speed to about 24-or-so centimetres per year.
Plain and simple, rapid melting of ice on land has driven Earth's North Pole to the east. This solid ice used to be on land, but is now liquid water spread everywhere across the planet.
We've been measuring this change to the land ice with satellites beginning in the early 1990s, right up to our current CryoSat-2, which was launched in 2010. Over the decades, the satellites have taken many tens of millions of height measurements. The most recent analysis tells us that between 2011 and 2014, Greenland and Antarctica between them were losing about 500 billion tonnes of land ice per year — about three-quarters of it from Greenland. This was an increase of two-to-three times over the previous loss rate as measured between 2003 and 2009.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by rst on Sunday July 19 2015, @03:28PM
Are we talking about the geographic or magnetic poles? It sounds like the summary is saying the geographic poles, but the details sound like the magnetic poles. Plus, like others have said, correlation is not causation.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday July 20 2015, @01:22AM
The rotational pole, which from the sounds of it, does not correlate to the geographic pole. This kind of make sense as if the rotational pole is moving close to a foot a year, that would mean the US and Canadian border, defined as 49 degrees N, would be moving all the time.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @07:53AM
that would mean the US and Canadian border, defined as 49 degrees N, would be moving all the time.
OMG! It's a Canadian Anthropogenic Global Warming Plot to talk over the northern tier of the United States! They will probably try to give us Quebec in trade. But now it all becomes clear. Terrance and Phillip were the first wave. Shatner, Celine Dion, and now Justin Bieber! Remember the Plains of Abraham, you real Americans! Where did you think all those Tories went? No, not the ones the became Confederates, the honest ones! Yes! North! "Strange Brew" is starting to look like a strangely prophetic film. Eh, hoseheads?
(Score: 1) by Bogsnoticus on Monday July 20 2015, @02:50AM
This is why RTFA is so important. It gives you this information so you don't need to post your ignorance and laziness to the world. :)
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.