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PUBLISHED MODELS, CITED MEASUREMENTS
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Pole positions Interactive atlas: NOAA 1590–2025, CALS10k.2 from 8000 BCE, WMM2025

Poles · position

The poles on the move

The magnetic poles (dip poles, where the field is vertical) drift by tens of kilometres a year. The trails follow the annual positions modelled by NOAA from 1590 to 2025; white dots are field surveys.

Year
—
North magnetic pole
—
  • North magnetic pole
  • South magnetic pole
  • Surveyed pole
Years modelled
436
1590 → 2025
Data imported on
2026-10-23
NOAA NCEI
Next update
WMM2025
annual predictions to 2030
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. Wandering of the Geomagnetic Poles (modelled annual dip-pole positions, 1590–2025). · Published literature; cited

NOAA NCEI annual positions (gufm1 and IGRF models); field surveys listed in the atlas below.

GEOMAGNETISM / 01

The poles in motion.

Explore modeled magnetic-pole movement from the Holocene to today. Choose a source and epoch, then zoom and pan the map.

436 NOAA YEARS
MODELED

NOAA modeled dip-pole positions. Select a year to see the two poles.

Explore the last reversal ↓

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01 / MAP

Global trajectories

● MODELED POSITIONS EQUIRECTANGULAR PROJECTION
SURFACE FIELD
NORTH POLE SOUTH POLE FULL TRAJECTORY GEOMAGNETIC POLE
North polar viewAzimuthal equidistant, 50°N–90°N: distances from the geographic pole are true along every meridian.
South polar viewAzimuthal equidistant, 50°S–90°S, 0° at the top. The field layer is not reprojected here.
Longitude −180° to 180° · Latitude −90° to 90° — Detailed local map · NASA Blue Marble and Natural Earth
03 / NOAA · 1590–2025

Travel through time

SELECTED YEAR2025
159017001800190020002025
04 / CHANGE

Latitude through the centuries

Angular distance from the equator, in degrees. Both series use absolute latitude for comparison.

North South
05 / DRIFT RATE

How fast do the poles move?

Great-circle distance since the previous model epoch divided by elapsed years. CALS10k.2 values average 50 years (40 for the last interval).

North South
06 / GLOBAL DIPOLE

Field strength and pole drift

Dipole moment from independent field-model coefficients. NOAA pole positions and field intensity are separate model products; the GUFM1/IGRF boundary is marked at 1900, and the shaded GUFM1 years before 1840 rely on an extrapolated g₁⁰.

SELECTED MOMENT—× 10²² A·m²—
07 / PARALLEL RECORDS

Independent records beside the model

These observations come from other instruments and archives. They share a time axis with the selected series, but none of them is used to calculate the poles or the field.

Compass readings in London

Declination calculated at London from GUFM1 and IGRF-14, with three early measurements. Gellibrand's comparison of these readings in 1634 revealed that declination changes with time.

GUFM1 / IGRF-14 model Historical measurement (rounded)Malin & Bullard (1981) ↗

Early readings are rounded and come from different London sites; they are not corrected to the model location. Gunter’s 1622 marker is ≈6° E, rounded from his Limehouse table.

Gunter (1673), p. 279 ↗

Sunspots and the Maunder Minimum

Annual mean sunspot number, SILSO version 2.0, from 1749. Solar activity drives the external field and aurorae; it does not move the core field's dip poles.

Length of day and geomagnetic jerks

Annual mean excess length of day from IERS, in milliseconds. Decadal changes are largely attributed to exchanges of angular momentum between core and mantle; jerks are abrupt changes in the field's secular variation.

Global jerk Regional jerkJerk review ↗

Great aurorae on the map

Select a storm to show it on the map. The dashed line is the authors' equatorward auroral boundary, drawn here with the dipole of the same year; the band shows the usual auroral zone near 65–70° geomagnetic latitude.

11 / OBSERVATIONS

Independent clues

South Atlantic Anomaly

Swarm satellites have observed a weak-field region expanding from 2014 to 2025. This is a recent observational context, not evidence that a reversal is imminent.

ESA Swarm analysis ↗

Read these comparisons carefully

The curves use different models, timescales and resolutions. A pole's drift rate, a regional weak-field patch and a global polarity reversal describe different aspects of the magnetic field.

SCIENTIFIC NOTE

What does this map show?

Magnetic dip poles are where Earth's magnetic field is vertical. NOAA supplies annual modeled positions for 1590–2025; CALS10k.2 is a separate Holocene reconstruction from 8000 BCE.

For CALS10k.2, cubic splines define spherical-harmonic coefficients through time. We solve for zero north and east field components at sea level. Lines join model epochs, not annual observations.

NOAA method ↗North data ↗South data ↗CALS10k.2 ↗NASA Blue Marble ↗Natural Earth ↗
WMM2025 · NOAA/BGS · 2025.0–2030.0

Predictive modeled magnetic dip poles, separate from the historical series.

WMM2025 ↗ North South
BEYOND 1590

A deeper magnetic past

CALS10k.2 is available in the separate historical view. Other models reach farther back, but their pole paths have not been computed here.

CALS10k.2~10,000 years · GFZ model and coefficients ArchKalmag14k~14,000 years · global model, 50-year steps SHA.DIF.14k~14,000 years · modeled north dip-pole path GGF100k~100,000 years · long-term field reconstruction

CALS10k.2 and NOAA are distinct models and give different positions in 1590. Their paths are separate; uncertainty grows farther into the past.

ABOUT · CREDITS

An independent atlas of published models

This atlas is an independent educational visualization. It redraws published magnetic-field models and surveys with their own numbers, in your browser, and does not produce new scientific results. Every value shown is a model result or a published measurement, with its source linked where it appears.

The atlas itself makes no network request at runtime once its files are loaded, and share links carry only the selected view. Audience measurement (Google Analytics) runs only if you accept it; the choice is stored on this device.

  • NOAA NCEI — modeled dip poles 1590–2025, IGRF-14 and WMM2025 test values · U.S. Government work, public domain · ncei.noaa.gov ↗
  • WMM2025 — predictive model 2025–2030, NOAA NCEI and British Geological Survey · ncei.noaa.gov ↗
  • CALS10k.2 — Holocene field model, Constable, Korte & Panovska (2016), EarthRef ERDA 2207 · CC BY 4.0 · earthref.org ↗
  • GGFMB — Matuyama–Brunhes reversal model, Mahgoub et al. (2023), EarthRef ERDA 2548 · CC BY 4.0 · earthref.org ↗
  • GUFM1 — historical field model 1590–1990, Jackson, Jonkers & Walker (2000) · doi:10.1098/rsta.2000.0569 ↗
  • GEOMAGIA50 / MagIC — archeomagnetic and volcanic database records, Brown et al. (2015); EarthRef CC BY 4.0 · doi:10.1186/s40623-015-0232-0 ↗
  • IERS EOP 20 C04 · SILSO sunspots (via NOAA SWPC) · IntCal20 — independent context series, each cited in its section
  • NASA Blue Marble — U.S. Government work, public domain · Natural Earth / world-atlas — public domain (data) and ISC license (topology)
  • Noto — Google, SIL Open Font License 1.1

Report an error or a missing source ↗Source code and data scripts ↗

SOURCES OF THIS PAGE
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. Wandering of the Geomagnetic Poles (modelled annual dip-pole positions, 1590–2025).
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. Wandering of the Geomagnetic Poles (modelled annual dip-pole positions, 1590–2025).
Licence : Published literature; cited
© 2026 Observatoire des phénomènes naturels · About · Data sources · Manage cookies Model results and published measurements, each with its source. No new forecast or interpretation is produced here.