Find the magnetic declination at your location
Check your declination

Find the magnetic declination
at your location


What is Magnetic Declination?

Did you know that magnetic compass does not always point to North? Actually, there are only a few locations on Earth where it points exactly to the True (geographic) North. The direction in which the compass needle points is known as Magnetic North, and the angle between Magnetic North and the True North direction is called magnetic declination.


US/UK World Magnetic Model - Epoch 2015.0
If the compass at your place is pointing clockwise with respect to the True North, declination is positive or EAST

If the compass at your place is pointing counter-clockwise with respect to the True North, declination is negative or WEST

Negative declination (WEST)

Positive declination (EAST)

How can we calculate declination at any given place?

One way would be to use declination maps. Unfortunately because of secular variation, declination values are constantly changing. When printed maps were the only way of getting this information, the declination values were somewhat out of date by the time the maps got to the general public.

Another way would be to perform a prediction. This should be based on a world-wide empirical model of the deep flows. This web page operated by the National Geophysical Data Center (NDGC) offers a pretty good value for declination. The model reflects a highly predictable rate of change, and will usually be more accurate than a map, and almost never less accurate.

The best way however is to use the current web site, which offers in a graphical format using Google Maps API the computed declination for any place on Earth. The algorithm implements the World Magnetic Model WMM2015.


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