North Pole moves: A new study in Geophysical Research Letters asserts that the North Pole is moving because of increased melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and also ice loss in other parts of the world.
The pole has shifted more than a dozen centimeters east each year since 2005, according to the study.
“There was a big change,”geophysicist and lead author Jianli Chen told Nature.
Before 2005, the pole shifted southeast at a rate of about 6 centimeters each year, but in 2005 that changed to about a shift of 21 centimeters east each year.
Scientists have known that poles shift; the shifts come seasonally from changes in environment.
Typically, the shift is circular, said Chen. But a yearly motion underlies the seasonal motion. The researchers found that accelerated ice loss and the related sea level rise accounted for more than 90 percent of the shift starting in 2005.
