magnetic north

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The direction toward the magnetic north pole, toward which the north-seeking arrow of a compass points when free from local magnetic influence.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The direction in which the north-pointing end of a compass needle points; at low latitudes it is close to geographic (true) north, but deviates substantially from true north as one nears the north pole.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun At a given point on Earth's surface, the direction of Earth's magnetic field, i.e. the direction into which the compass needle of a magnetic compass points.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the direction in which a compass needle points