Publication Date April 18, 2016 | National Geographic

Climate Change Is Moving the North Pole

North Pole

"What we have shown is that melting ice and a pattern of continental water storage are combining to cause a dramatic shift in the direction of the pole," says Surendra Adhikari, an Earth scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California...

Adhikari and his colleague and co-author Erik Ivins think the rotational pole is shifting toward Europe because there has been a massive loss of water from lakes and aquifers in Eurasia, around the Caspian Sea, and in India. Warmer temperatures overall have led to more evaporation and less precipitation in many areas, and booming human populations have been sucking up groundwater from reservoirs and wells.

"What we have shown is that melting ice and a pattern of continental water storage are combining to cause a dramatic shift in the direction of the pole," says Adhikari