Andy Biggin of the University of Liverpool, a lead organizer of the work conducted at the 2017 Nordic Paleomagnetism Workshop, collects paleomagnetic samples from Saint Helena. Credit: Yael Engbers
A Robust Proxy for Geomagnetic Reversal Rates in Deep Time
By Alka Tripathy-Lang
December 14, 2020
North is north, until it isn’t. Earth’s magnetic field has repeatedly reversed itself, with magnetic north sometimes residing closer to today’s South Pole and vice versa. The time between these global-scale swaps has ranged from tens of thousands to millions of years, and the frequency of reversals may be linked to processes in the deep Earth, where changes in mantle convection can influence the distribution of heat at the core-mantle boundary.
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