depricated

Balloon launched from Long Duration Balloon facility, 1/2 hour drive from McMurdo station, on January 15, 2012, floated in a nearly perfect circle counter-clockwise. If the Birkeland current exits through the south pole, it would have a magnetic field oriented in the same direction as the anti-cyclone at the south pole, winds around the Birkeland current that result from the atmosphere being positively charged.

The drift of Nansen's Fram and the Jeanette show the same wind directions at the north pole (clockwise if viewed from above the Earth, counter-clockwise if viewed from below Earth. )

Fridtjof Nansen mentions that the compass needle is usually inclined towards the west, on page 19 of Farthest North, published in 1897. Fits with predicted magnetic field direction around sun-Earth Birkeland current entering at north pole.

"Here he worked away indefatigably at his observations day after day, watching the often mysterious movements of the magnetic needle, which would sometimes give him no end of trouble. One day—it was November 24th—he came into supper a little after 6 o’clock quite alarmed and said, “There has just been a singular inclination of the needle to 24°, and, remarkably enough, its northern extremity pointed to the east. I cannot remember ever having heard of such an inclination.” He also had several others of about 15°. At the same time, through the opening into his observatory he noticed that it was unusually light out-of-doors, and that not only the ship, but the ice in the distance, was as plainly visible as if it had been full moonlight. No aurora, however, could be discerned through the thick clouds that covered the sky. It would appear, then, that this unusual inclination was in some way connected with the northern lights, though it was to the east and not to the west, as usual. "

Synapses

The Anticyclone - JPL

Long Duration Balloon Facility - NASA

Was Nansen following the magnetic field around the Birkeland current?

On page 201 of Farthest North, Fridtjof Nansen describes how his progress is skewed towards the west,

"This morning I made out our latitude and longitude. The former was (Sunday, May 5th) 84° 31′ N., and the latter 66° 15′ E. We were not so far south as I expected, but considerably farther west. It is the drift which has put us back and westward. I shall, therefore, for the future, steer a more southerly course than before, about due south (true), as we are still drifting westward, and, above everything, I am afraid of getting too far in that direction. It is to be hoped that we shall soon have land in sight, and we shall then know where to steer. We undoubtedly ought to be there now. "

As he had no other explanation, he assumes the ice as a whole that he is on must be drifting. He describes coming to that conclusion on page 164 of the same book,

"It became more and more of a riddle to me that we did not make greater progress northward. I kept on calculating and adding up our marches as we went along, but always with the same result; that is to say, provided only the ice were still, we must be far above the eighty-sixth parallel. It was becoming only too clear to me, however, that the ice was moving southward, and that in its capricious drift, at the mercy of wind and current, we had our worst enemy to combat. "

The Birkeland current entering the Earth through the north pole, would create a magnetic field around itself, which is oriented clockwise with north pointing towards the east in the Earth magnetic field. An alternative hypothesis to why Fridtjof Nansen seemed to move westward could be that his compass was pointing towards the magnetic north of the magnetic field around the Birkeland current.

The magnitude of the magnetic field around a wire is based on the amount of charge, how much current is running through the wire, i.e. how much current is flowing through the Birkeland current, and also the radius. Assuming the Earth is "charged" by the sun, there would be a strong magnetic field around the current coming into the north pole, that would affect compasses and fool polar explorers like Fridtjon Nansen who assume their compass is pointing towards the Earth's magnetic north.

Synapses

Birkeland Currents: A Force-Free Field-Aligned Model