The North Pole is moving, and the shutdown means we aren't keeping up (GPS not updated)
Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/01/17/north-pole-is-moving-shutdown-means-we-arent-keeping-up/?utm_term=.e1cf9227be83)
A storm is raging in the center of the Earth. Nearly 2,000 miles beneath our feet, in the swirling, spinning ball of liquid iron that forms our planet’s core and generates its magnetic field, a jet has formed, roiling the molten material beneath the Arctic.
This geological gust was enough to send Earth’s magnetic North Pole skittering across the globe. The place to which a compass needle points is shifting toward Siberia at a pace of 30 miles a year.
And thanks to the political storm in Washington, scientists have been unable to post an emergency update of the World Magnetic Model, which cellphone GPS systems and military navigators use to orient themselves. Roughly half the employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which hosts the model and publishes related software, are furloughed because of the partial government shutdown, now in its 27th day.
As reported in Nature, the updated model was supposed to be released this week. It would have been a minor change for most of us — the discrepancy between the model and the North Pole’s new location is measurable only to people trying to navigate precisely and at extremely high latitudes.
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