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Volume 59 Supplement 7

Special Issue: Perspectives of Geomagnetism: Geodynamo, Paleomagnetism, and Rock magnetism—Tribute to Prof. Masaru Kono

Geomagnetic jerks from the Earth’s surface to the top of the core

Earth, Planets and Space volume 59, pages 675–684 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Rapid changes in the magnetic field characterised by an abrupt change in the secular variation have been named “secular variation impulses” or “geomagnetic jerks”. Three of these events, around 1968, 1978 and 1990, occurred during the time-span covered by the comprehensive model CM4 (Sabaka et al., 2002, 2004). This model, providing the best temporal resolution between 1960 and 2002 as well as a fine separation of the different magnetic sources, can be used to study rapid phenomena of internal origin. In order to analyse these events all over the globe, synthetic time series were obtained from the CM4 model between 1960–2002. Geomagnetic jerks are detected here as a rapid movement of the zero isoline of the second field derivative. Analysis of the area swept out by this isoline as a function of time allows us to map the spatial extent of jerks though time, and to identify an event around 1985 that is localized in the Pacific area. At the core surface, we compute the fluid flows under the frozen-flux and tangentially geostrophic assumptions. The flows do not exhibit any special pattern at jerk times, but instead show a smooth temporal evolution over the whole time period. However, the mean amplitude of the dynamical pressure associated with these flows present maxima at each jerk occurrence and helps to confirm the identification of a jerk in 1985.

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Author notes

  1. Aude Chambodut

    Present address: Department of Magnetic Observatories, Ecole et Observatoire des Sciences de la Terre, 67084, Strasbourg Cedex, France

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied and Industrial Mathematics, University of Potsdam, Postfach 60 15 53, D-14415, Potsdam, Germany

    Aude Chambodut

  2. GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Telegrafenberg, D-14473, Potsdam, Germany

    Aude Chambodut & Mioara Mandea

  3. Laboratoire de Géophysique Interne et Tectonophysique, Université Joseph Fourier, BP53, 38041, Grenoble Cedex 9, France

    Céline Eymin

Authors
  1. Aude Chambodut
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  2. Céline Eymin
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  3. Mioara Mandea
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Chambodut, A., Eymin, C. & Mandea, M. Geomagnetic jerks from the Earth’s surface to the top of the core. Earth Planet Sp 59, 675–684 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1186/BF03352730

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