[King Prout]

actually, the magnetic poles have shifted significantly within the last 40 years, which is why maps and charts older than a few years are unreliable for navigation. Hell, on some land nav courses I went through in ROTC, they issued multiple degree corrections to the stated magnetic north on maps less than 15 years old.
moreover, you misread: the article stated very plainly that polar flux is highly irregular - sometimes rapid, sometimes quite static for very long periods.

[Nowhere Man]

actually, the magnetic poles have shifted significantly within the last 40 years, which is why maps and charts older than a few years are unreliable for navigation. Hell, on some land nav courses I went through in ROTC, they issued multiple degree corrections to the stated magnetic north on maps less than 15 years old.
moreover, you misread: the article stated very plainly that polar flux is highly irregular - sometimes rapid, sometimes quite static for very long periods.

I have an old National Geographic magazine from 1967 and there was a chart in there on where the North Magnetic Pole wandered from the Time of Christ to 1967. There was a lot of movement and it seems that it picked up in the 20th Century.

I remember a couple of times I kept seeing an AWACS plane fly around my house, I live in an air pattern near Greater Pittsburgh Int'l Airport and the AWACS kept coming in on approach and circling around many times before it landed. I asked my neighbor, who was in the Penna Air Nat'l Guard as a mechanic of our planes from the P-51 Mustang to the A-7 fighters, he told me that the Air Force checks the runways, registers and makes corrections for changes in magnetic north. Dunno why they need an AWACS plane to do it but well, I guess the Air Force has its reasons.