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    What Is Magnetic Declination

    Uploaded by

    Giorgi Kandelaki
    The document discusses magnetic declination, which is the angle between magnetic north and true north. Magnetic declination varies by location and over time due to changes in the Earth's magnetic field. As a result, compasses need to be adjusted when traveling to account for these variations, otherwise there could be large errors between a compass reading and true north.

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    What Is Magnetic Declination

    Uploaded by

    Giorgi Kandelaki
    50 views2 pages
    The document discusses magnetic declination, which is the angle between magnetic north and true north. Magnetic declination varies by location and over time due to changes in the Earth's magnetic field. As a result, compasses need to be adjusted when traveling to account for these variations, otherwise there could be large errors between a compass reading and true north.

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    What is Magnetic Declination

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    The document discusses magnetic declination, which is the angle between magnetic north and true north. Magnetic declination varies by location and over time due to changes in the Earth's magnetic field. As a result, compasses need to be adjusted when traveling to account for these variations, otherwise there could be large errors between a compass reading and true north.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    50 views2 pages

    What Is Magnetic Declination

    Uploaded by

    Giorgi Kandelaki
    The document discusses magnetic declination, which is the angle between magnetic north and true north. Magnetic declination varies by location and over time due to changes in the Earth's magnetic field. As a result, compasses need to be adjusted when traveling to account for these variations, otherwise there could be large errors between a compass reading and true north.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    What is Magnetic Declination?

    Did you know that magnetic compass does not always point to North? Actually, there
    are only a few locations on Earth where it points exactly to the True (geographic) North.
    The direction in which the compass needle points is known as Magnetic North, and the
    angle between Magnetic North and the True North direction is called magnetic
    declination.

    Magnetic declination varies both from place to place, and with the passage of time. As a
    traveller cruises the east coast of the United States, for example, the declination varies
    from 20 degrees west (in Maine) to zero (in Florida), to 10 degrees east (in Texas),
    meaning a compass adjusted at the beginning of the journey would have a true north
    error of over 30 degrees if not adjusted for the changing declination. The magnetic
    declination in a given area will change slowly over time, possibly as much as 2-25
    degrees every hundred years or so, depending upon how far from the magnetic poles it
    is. Complex fluid motion in the outer core of the Earth (the molten metallic region that
    lies from 2800 to 5000 km below the Earth's surface) causes the magnetic field to
    change slowly with time. This change is known as secular variation. Because of secular
    variation, declination values shown on old topographic, marine and aeronautical charts
    need to be updated if they are to be used without large errors. Unfortunately, the
    annual change corrections given on most of these maps cannot be applied reliably if the
    maps are more than a few years old since the secular variation also changes with time in
    an unpredictable manner.

    If the compass at your place is pointing clockwise with respect to the True North,


    declination is positive or EAST
    If the compass at your place is pointing counter-clockwise with respect to the True
    North, declination is negative or WEST

    How can we calculate declination at any given place?

    One way would be to use declination maps. Unfortunately because of secular variation,
    declination values are constantly changing. When printed maps were the only way of
    getting this information, the declination values were somewhat out of date by the time
    the maps got to the general public.

    Another way would be to perform a prediction. This should be based on a world-wide


    empirical model of the deep flows. This web page operated by the National Geophysical
    Data Center (NDGC) offers a pretty good value for declination. The model reflects a
    highly predictable rate of change, and will usually be more accurate than a map, and
    almost never less accurate.

    The best way however is to use the current web site, which offers in a graphical format
    using Google Maps API the computed declination for any place on Earth. The algorithm
    implements the World Magnetic Model WMM2020.

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