The Arctic Pole

The Arctic Pole or Northern Pole of Inaccessibility was first established by Sir Hubert Wilikins in 1927 when he wanted to traverse the Arctic Ocean by aircraft for the first time and therefore needed to know where the very centre of the ocean was.

Obviously in 1927 the technology for establishing this furthest point from land was limited in its accuracy. In 2005 Jim McNeill had been working with NASA sponsored US scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center to validate their satellite estimates of the degree of sea ice melting and therefore asked them to re-establish the exact position using the latest GPS and satellite technology.

In doing so it appears that a number of islands off of the Russian coastline were originally missed out. This changed the position from:

84°03'N 174°W to 85°15'N 176°09'E