Shutdown Delays Navigation Update

The government shutdown is delaying an urgent update of the World Magnetic Model, the underlying basis for all modern navigation systems, and those systems are in danger of becoming unacceptably inaccurate. Magnetic North, the wandering point near the North Pole that is the reference for navigation services, is racing away from Canada toward Siberia. It's moving so fast that all navigation data needs a reset. The World Magnetic Model is a joint responsibility of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Geological Survey and geophysicists were planning to issue the update Jan. 15, but the U.S. scientists are furloughed. The new model is now tentatively set to be released Jan. 30 but that will depend on whether the shutdown is over by then.

The current model was supposed to be good until 2020 but the magnetic pole moved more than 30 miles last year and that's enough to throw the readings on everything from smartphones to ships' navigation systems out of whack. The earth's magnetic field is created by molten iron in the earth's core and it moves around quite a bit. "The location of the north magnetic pole appears to be governed by two large-scale patches of magnetic field, one beneath Canada and one beneath Siberia," Phil Livermore of the University of Leeds told a recent American Geophysical Union meeting. "The Siberian patch is winning the competition."