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What is True Polar Wander, and Could It Happen to Us?
We think of the Earth as a mostly stable thing…or at least we did until the last crazy couple of years.
But we definitely think of where we are on the Earth as stable on any time scale that matters to us. England is in the temperate zone. We know academically that the Atlantic is slowly getting wider and the Pacific is slowly getting narrower.
There’s another way, though, that things can “move” and that’s the phenomenon known as “true polar wander.”
What is True Polar Wander?
True polar wander is when the rotational axis of a solid body shifts. To the outside observer, this would look like the planet tilting onto its side.
This is different from apparent polar wander, which is caused by fluctuations and occasional reversals in the magnetic field.
In apparent polar wander, which is happening constantly, magnetic north and south drift around. Right now, the north pole is heading towards Siberia. This is normal, because the convection currents in the Earth’s core cause the magnetic field to shift all the time.
In true polar wander, true, geographic north actually moves.