Earth’s magnetic power is shifting from Canada to Siberia

For four centuries, the northern hemisphere’s most powerful concentration of Earth’s magnetic field sat beneath Canada, anchored in the deep currents of its outer core. Now, high-precision satellite data show that dominance is shifting eastward toward Siberia.

Data from the European Space Agency’s Swarm satellite constellation, compiled over 11 years of continuous observation, show that the strong-field region under Canada is steadily shrinking and weakening, while the equivalent region under Siberia is expanding and intensifying — a geophysical power transfer with real-world consequences for navigation systems worldwide.

The findings appear in a study published in Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors by researchers at the Technical University of Denmark.​

The study maps magnetic field intensity at Earth’s surface between 2014 and 2025, measuring how much area is enclosed within specific field-strength thresholds. The picture in the northern hemisphere is unambiguous.

In Canada, the area enclosed within the 57 000 nanoTesla (nT) field-strength contour shrank by 0.65% of Earth’s total surface area over the 11-year period. The peak field strength in the Canadian sector fell from 58 832 nT to 58 031 nT — a drop of 801 nT, or 1.4%. The area within the 55 000 nT contour decreased by 0.41% of Earth’s surface area over the same period.​

Opposite changes have unfolded across Siberia, where the strong-field region has steadily widened and intensified. Between 2014 and 2025 its area grew by 0.42 % of Earth’s surface and its maximum field strength rose by 260 nT — from 61 359 nT to 61 619 nT. Already dominant a decade ago, the Siberian lobe now leads by a wider margin.

Across the southern hemisphere, the strong-field region situated between Australia and Antarctica has remained almost unchanged throughout the same period. Its maximum field intensity fell by just 37 nT over the same 11 years, less than one-twentieth of the Canadian decline, confirming that the dramatic reorganisation is a northern hemisphere phenomenon.​

The surface changes are driven by what is happening roughly 3 000 km (1 800 miles) below ground, at the boundary between Earth’s liquid outer core and the surrounding rocky mantle. Two large concentrations of strong magnetic flux sit beneath Canada and Siberia, respectively, and changes in how molten iron flows between them determine which one exerts greater pull.​

Research published alongside and prior to the Swarm study points to a process that began intensifying between 1970 and 1999: changes in core flow elongated and then weakened the Canadian flux lobe, while the Siberian lobe grew relatively stronger.

The Swarm data now quantify the consequences of that process playing out over the following decade and a half: the Canadian lobe at the core-mantle boundary has decreased in size and strength, while the Siberian concentration has expanded.

“The field is getting weaker in Canada but stronger around Siberia, and that pulls the magnetic pole towards Siberia,” Ciarán Beggan, a geophysicist at the British Geological Survey, said.​

The migration of magnetic power in the subsurface is directly tracking the movement of the north magnetic pole itself — the point on Earth’s surface where a compass needle points straight down.

The pole sat within the Canadian Arctic for at least 400 years before beginning to accelerate toward Russia in the 1990s. By the early 2000s, it was moving at a record speed of around 55 km/h (34 mph). More recently, that pace has slowed significantly, to approximately 36 km/h (22 mph) per year, according to the most recent NOAA report.

The British Geological Survey has described it as the largest deceleration in recorded history. Scientists at the BGS predict the pole will continue drifting toward Siberia over the next five years, albeit more slowly.

The 11-year Swarm record captures this slowdown in the magnetic field data itself: the rate of change in Canada and Siberia has been steady but not accelerating since 2014, consistent with the pole’s deceleration observed at the surface.

The World Magnetic Model (WMM), the global standard used by military and civilian aircraft, ships, submarines, and consumer GPS devices, must be updated to track the field’s movement. NOAA and the British Geological Survey released a new version of the WMM in 2025, the most detailed ever produced, with spatial resolution ten times greater than its predecessors.

The urgency of the update is illustrated by the navigation error it corrects: a traveller relying on the previous model for a 8 500 km (5 280 miles) journey from South Africa to the United Kingdom could have ended up as much as 150 km (93 miles) off course.​

The new WMM incorporates the ongoing Canada-to-Siberia shift. NOAA’s most recent annual report, released in January 2026, confirmed that the north magnetic pole’s position remained close to model predictions over the past year, moving at roughly 36 km/h (22 mph) — still fast enough that any five-year-old navigation chart is measurably out of date.​

The Canada-to-Siberia transition is not without precedent on geologic timescales. Analysis of Arctic sediment cores from Svalbard, published in 2022, showed that the magnetic north pole has oscillated between the two regions multiple times over the past 22 000 years, with periods of rapid drift punctuating long stretches of relative stability.​

What is new is the ability to watch it happen in near-real time. The Swarm constellation orbits Earth 15 to 16 times daily, producing a continuous record that, for the first time, allows researchers to separate the slow drift of the core field from shorter-period fluctuations caused by ocean currents, ionospheric currents, and space weather.​

ESA has stated its intent to keep Swarm operating beyond 2030, when a period of reduced solar activity will provide even cleaner access to the core signal.

By then, the tug-of-war between Canada and Siberia will have been running for half a century, and the Swarm record will be able to provide even more insights.

References:

¹ Finlay, C. C., Olsen, N., & the Swarm Science Team (2025). Core field changes from eleven years of Swarm satellite observations. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, 368, 107447. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pepi.2025.107447

² State of the Geomagnetic Field – NOAA/NCEI – December 2025

Teo Blašković

I'm a dedicated researcher, journalist, and editor at The Watchers. With over 20 years of experience in the media industry, I specialize in hard science news, focusing on extreme weather, seismic and volcanic activity, space weather, and astronomy, including near-Earth objects and planetary defense strategies. You can reach me at teo /at/ watchers.news.

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