The Three Norths Are Moving On: A Once-In-A-Lifetime Alignment Shifts This Weekend

Defining North is fiddlier than you might think. “True north” points to the geographic North Pole at the top of the planet, while “magnetic north” is where a compass needle aligns with the Earth’s magnetic field. There’s also “grid north,” the straight lines on Ordnance Survey maps that approximate true north because they’re drawn on a two-dimensional grid trying to represent a three-dimensional, spherical planet.

True north is fixed and unchanging. For most of the world, it’s off kilter from grid north, but they line up perfectly along a specific longitude on Ordnance Survey maps: 2 degrees west of Greenwich (2° W).

Meanwhile, magnetic north is constantly on the move. This is because Earth’s magnetic field is generated by the movement of molten iron sloshing around the planet’s outer core. As a result, the position of magnetic north shifts, sometimes by several kilometres each year.

In November 2023, data from the British Geological Survey showed all three norths were converging near the village of Langton Matravers in Dorset along the English south coast.  

This is because the magnetic north had been slowly creeping eastward across the map. The point of alignment moved up through France, then the English Channel, before crossing through the south of England. 

It started in Langton Matravers, but the alignment slowly moved up through the country at 2° W with the movement of magnetic north (see diagram below).

Now, the historic meeting in England is over. The British Geological Survey and the Ordnance Survey say their latest data and calculations show the triple alignment will leave the country at Berwick-upon-Tweed, the northernmost town in England, on December 13, 2025, and move over the North Sea.

“When it crosses the coast at Berwick-upon-Tweed, it will have travelled 576km (about 358 miles) in 1127 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,” Mark Greaves, Earth measurement expert at Ordnance Survey, said in a statement.

The alignment won’t occur over land again until the end of October 2026 in Scotland, before departing once again to the North Sea in mid-December 2026. It won’t be back in England for several centuries. 

Bear in mind, scientists at the British Geological Survey are excited by this event because it was occurring over land in England on their Ordnance Survey maps. Before 2023, the alignment had been occurring elsewhere in Europe along 2° W, namely France and Spain, as it gradually moved northwards across the map. Nevertheless, as the first time the alignment has happened over England since records began, it’s still a pretty significant moment. 

But don’t expect your compass to start spinning wildly and satellites to fall from the skies; the alignment of the norths over a country is an interesting geospatial quirk more than anything else, and it won’t have any real effect on daily life.

“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,” said Dr Ciarán Beggan, geophysicist at British Geological Survey.

“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,” Dr Beggan added.