The historic alignment of true, magnetic, and grid north is set to leave England at Berwick-upon-Tweed today
The three norths leave England at Berwick today(Image: Getty Images)
The historic alignment of true, magnetic and grid north leaves England today at Berwick-upon-Tweed. True north is the direction to the geographic North Pole, grid north is where the vertical blue lines shown on Ordnance Survey (OS) maps converge, and magnetic north is the direction that a compass needle points as it aligns with the Earth’s magnetic field.
In November 2022, geospatial history was made as all three “norths” aligned and met at a point in Langton Matravers in Dorset, England, for the first time. Now, after three historic years together, magnetic field data collected by the British Geological Survey (BGS) and calculations made by the OS shows the triple alignment is set to leave England at Berwick-upon-Tweed and move into the North Sea.
It is predicted that the triple alignment will hit land again at the end of October next year in Drums, in Scotland. It will then pass through Mintlaw, before its last stop in Fraserburgh around mid-December 2026, eventually returning to the North Sea.
Events such as this haven’t been recorded since the 1600s, and the OS says that the alignment won’t return to England for hundreds of years, due to magnetic north moving slowly. According to the OS, once over the North Sea, the three norths are expected to continue northwards before leaving the British national grid.
They will stay in alignment for another couple of years before magnetic north separates from true north and grid north. The alignment began in 2014, when magnetic north became east of grid north for some locations in Great Britain for the first time in in more than 350 years.
This affects slightly affected navigators using a compass, who needed to adjust their bearing by subtracting instead of adding the different between magnetic and grid north. However, the OS said that it will not change how people navigate, with good map and compass users already accounting for the differences between magnetic and grid north.
The OS added: “But as rare moments go, this one’s worth marking on the map.” During the three norths’ time in England, they moved northwards through Poole near the end of 2022, then through Chippenham and Birmingham before reaching Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire last October.
The triple alignment then passed through the Pennines and will leave England at Berwick-upon-Tweed today. Mark Greaves, Earth measurement expert at OS, said: “Due to refinement of the underlying models and the prediction data, the alignment’s progress has slowed slightly since the initial predictions back in 2022.
The map displays a series of locations along the alignment line and the date when it aligned with magnetic north.(Image: © Ordnance Survey)
“When it crosses the coast at Berwick-upon-Tweed it will have travelled 576km (about 358 miles) in 1,127 days so that’s about 511m per day (or about 5.9 mm per second or about 0.013 miles per hour). It will likely be a very long time before the alignment comes around again.”
Dr Ciarán Beggan, geophysicist at BGS, said: “The three norths combining in Great Britain has been a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. Although part of geospatial history, there is no impact for navigators, pilots and captains once the alignment leaves, and people will still need to continue to take account of the variation between magnetic north from a compass and grid (or true) north on a map.
“It’s been a privilege to be able to observe this phenomenon over the past few years. The magnetic field is not predictable in the long term, so we don’t know how many hundreds of years it will take for this historic alignment to occur again.”