Science Alert April 23, 2019
Anchored by the north and south magnetic poles the magnetic field waxes and wanes in strength, undulating based on what’s going on in the core. The north magnetic pole movement made the World Magnetic Model – which tracks the field and informs compasses, smartphone GPS, and navigation systems on planes and ships. An international team of researchers (France, Denmark) attempted to simulate the physical conditions of Earth’s core by having supercomputers crunch 4 million hours’ worth of calculations. They found that sometimes there are pockets of liquid iron in the core that happen to be much warmer and lighter than the surrounding fluid. If the difference between these hot, less dense bits of fluid and their colder, denser counterparts is great enough, the warm liquid can rise very quickly. That rapid motion then triggers magnetic waves that careen toward the core’s surface, causing geomagnetic jerks. Within the next few years, they envision that it should indeed be possible to capture past jerks and predict the future ones with improved accuracy…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
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