Where is the South Pole ?
Unlike the North Pole the South Pole is inland. It is near the middle of the Great Antarctic ice sheet at an altitude of 2800 m. It is 1230 km from the nearest coast. The ice at the Pole is moving at about 10 m per year. Each year staff at the Amundsen-Scott (USA) station, at the South Pole, move the marker flag to compensate for the movement of the ice. The magnetic South Pole on the other hand doesn’t have a fixed position, it drifts about continually by quite a long way. It was first reached during Shackleton’s British Antarctic Expedition (1907-1909) by Professor Edgeworth David and Sir Douglas Mawson (Australian geologists) and Alistair Mackay. At that time the magnetic pole lay within the Antarctic continent at latitude 71.6°S and longitude 152°E. Today the Magnetic South Pole lies far out to sea at latitude 65°S and longitude 139°E, it travels 10 to 15 km north-west each year. The pole wanders daily in a roughly elliptical path around this average position, and may be as far as
