Are the Earth’s magnetic poles about to swap places?

Are the Earth’s magnetic poles about to swap places? (earthsky.com)

Deep inside the Earth, liquid iron is flowing and generating the Earth’s magnetic field, which protects our atmosphere and satellites against harmful radiation from the sun. This field changes over time, and also behaves differently in different parts of the world. The field can even change polarity completely, with the magnetic north and south poles switching places. Between South America and southern Africa, there is an enigmatic magnetic region called the South Atlantic Anomaly, where the field is a lot weaker than we would expect. Weak and unstable fields are thought to precede magnetic reversals, so some have argued this feature may be evidence that we are facing one.

Now our new study, published June 12, 2020, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has uncovered how long the field in the South Atlantic has been acting up – and sheds light on whether it is something to worry about.

Weak magnetic fields make us more prone to magnetic storms that have the potential to knock out electronic infrastructure, including power grids. The magnetic field of the South Atlantic Anomaly is already so weak that it can adversely affect satellites and their technology when they fly past it. The strange region is thought to be related to a patch of magnetic field that is pointing a different direction to the rest at the top of the planet’s liquid outer core at a depth of 1,795 miles (2,889 km) within the Earth.

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