I Can’t Sleep - Earth’s Magnetic Field | Gentle Bedtime Reading

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

Drift off with this calm bedtime reading on Earth’s magnetic field, created to ease insomnia and bring comfort to restless nights. In this soothing episode, Benjamin explores the origins of Earth’s magnetic field, how it protects the planet from solar winds, and the role it plays in navigation and life itself. His steady, gentle narration blends knowledge with relaxation—no whispers, no hypnosis, just calm, fact-filled storytelling to quiet the mind. Whether you’re struggling with stress, anxiety, or sleeplessness, press play, unwind, and drift into peaceful rest while learning about Earth’s magnetic field. Want More? Request a Topic: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/request-a-topic Ad-Free Episodes: https://icantsleep.supportingcast.fm/ Shop Sleep-Friendly Products: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/sponsors Join the Discussion on Discord: https://discord.gg/myhGhVUhn7 This content is derived from the Wikipedia article on Earth’s Magnetic Field, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license. Read the full article: Wikipedia – Earth’s Magnetic Field. Happy sleeping! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to a Glassbox media podcast. What if I told you that most of the modern day self-help advice you've been hearing could actually make you worse? The key to a better life isn't about feel-good gimmicks that sound catchy. The Mentally Stronger Podcast gives you access to a licensed therapist who shares science-backed tools that will actually change your life. Hi, I'm Amy Morin, psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international best-selling author. In each episode, we cover research-back strategies, like how to stop relying on willpower and start creating habits for lasting change. And the five mental strength-building exercises you can do from your couch.

I also speak to world-class experts like Dr. Nicole Kane, who shares how to permanently heal anxiety by addressing the root cause. With over 200 episodes in our catalog, this podcast is for you if you're ready to crush self-doubt, conquer challenges, and become stronger than ever with therapist-approved strategies that can change your life. Listen to Mentally Stronger with Therapist Amy Morin, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast, where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster. Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled Earth's Magnetic Field.

Earth's magnetic field, also known as the geomagnetic field, is the magnetic field that extends from Earth's interior out into space, where it interacts with the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emanating from the sun. The magnetic field is generated by electric currents due to the motion of convection currents of a mixture of molten iron and nickel in Earth's outer core. These convection currents are caused by heat escaping from the core and natural process called a geodynamo.

The magnitude of Earth's magnetic field at its surface ranges from 25 to 65 microtestlas. As an approximation, it is represented by a field of a magnetic dipole currently tilted at an angle of about 11 degrees with respect to Earth's rotational axis, as if there were an enormous bar magnet placed at that angle through the center of the Earth. The North Geomagnetic Pole actually represents

the south pole of Earth's magnetic field, and conversely the south geomagnetic pole corresponds to the north pole of Earth's magnetic field, because opposite magnetic poles attract and the north end of a magnet like a compass needle points toward Earth's south magnetic field, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. While the north and south magnetic poles are usually located near the geographic poles,

they slowly and continuously move over geological time scales, but sufficiently slowly for ordinary compasses to remain useful for navigation. However, at irregular intervals averaging several hundred thousand years, Earth's field reverses and the north and south magnetic poles, respectively, abruptly switch places. These reversals of the geomagnetic poles have a record in rocks that are of value to paleomagnetists in calculating geomagnetic fields in the past. Such information, in turn, is helpful in studying the motions of conduct,

and ocean floors above the ionosphere that is defined by the extent of Earth's magnetic field in space. It extends several tens of thousands of kilometers into space, protecting Earth from the charged particles of the solar wind and cosmic rays that would otherwise strip away the upper atmosphere, including the ozone layer that protects Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Earth magnetic field detects most of the solar wind, whose charged particles would otherwise strip away the ozone layer that protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation.

One stripping mechanism is for gas to be caught in bubbles of the magnetic field, which are ripped off by solar winds. Calculations of the loss of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere of Mars resulting from scavenging of ions by the solar wind indicate that the dissipation of the magnetic field of Mars caused a near total loss of its atmosphere. The study of the past magnetic field of the Earth is known as paleomagnetism.

The polarity of the Earth's magnetic field is recorded in igneous rocks and reversals of the field are thus detectable as stripes centered on mid-ocean ridges, where the seafloor is spreading, while the stability of the geomagnetic poles between reversals has allowed paleomagnetism to track the past motion of continents. Reversals also provide the bases for magnetostratigraphy, a way of dating rocks and sediments.

The field also magnetizes the crust, and magnetic anomalies can be used to search for deposits. of metal ore. Humans have used compasses for direction-finding since the 11th century AD and for navigation since the 12th century. Although the magnetic declination does shift with time, this wandering is slow enough that a simple compass can remain useful for navigation. Using magnetoreception, various other organisms ranging from some types of bacteria to pigeons, use the Earth's magnetic field for orientation and navigation. At any location, the Earth's magnetic field can be represented by a three-dimensional vector. A typical procedure for measuring its direction is to use a

compass to determine the direction of magnetic north. Its angle relative to true north is the declination, D, or variation. Facing magnetic north, the angle the field makes with the horizontal, is the inclination, I, or magnetic dip. The intensity, F, of the field, is proportional to the force it exerts on a magnet. Another common representation is in X, North, Y, East, and Z-down coordinates. The intensity of the field is often measured in Gauss, G, but is generally reported in Microtestlas. with one gauze equaling 100 microtestlas. A nanotesla is also referred to as a gamma.

The Earth's field ranges between approximately 25 and 65 microtestlas. By comparison, a strong refrigerator magnet has a field of about 10,000 microtestlas. A map of intensity contours is called an isodynamic chart. As the world magnet model shows, the intensity tends to decrease from the poles to the equator. A minimum intensity occurs in the South Atlantic anomaly over South America, while there are maxima over northern Canada, Siberia, and the coast of Antarctica south of Australia. The intensity of the magnetic field is subject to change over time.

A 2021 paleo-magnetic study from the University of Liverpool contributed to a growing body of evidence that the Earth's magnetic field cycles with intensity every 200 million years. The lead author stated that our findings, when considered alongside the existing datasets, support the existence of an approximately 200 million-year-long cycle in the strength of the Earth's magnetic field

related to deep earth processes. The inclination is given by an angle that can assume values between negative 90 degrees up to 90 degrees down. In the northern hemisphere, the field points downwards. It is straight down at the north magnetic pole and rotates upwards as the latitude decreases until it is horizontal 0 degrees at the magnetic equator. It continues to rotate upwards until it is straight up at the south magnetic pull.

Inclination can be measured with a dip circle. Declination is positive for an eastward deviation of the field relative to true north. It can be estimated by comparing the magnetic north-south heading on a compass with the direction of a celestial pole. Maps typically include information on the declination as an aim. angle or a small diagram showing the relationship between magnetic north and true north. Information on declination for a region can be represented by a chart with isogonic lines, contour lines with each line representing a fixed declination. Near the surface of the earth, its magnetic field can be closely approximated by the field of a magnetic

dipole, positioned at the center of the earth, and tilt. at an angle of about 11 degrees with respect to the rotational axis of the Earth. The dipole is roughly equivalent to a powerful bar magnet, with its south pole pointing towards the geomagnetic north pole. This may seem surprising, but the north pole of a magnet is so defined because, if allowed to rotate freely, it points roughly northward in the geographic sense.

Since the north pole of a magnet attracts the south poles of other magnets and repels the north poles, it must be attracted to the south pole of Earth's magnet. The dipolar field accounts for 80 to 90% of the field in most locations. Historically, the north and south poles of a magnet were first defined by the Earth's magnetic field, not vice versa, since one of the first uses for a magnet was as a company. A magnet's north pole is defined as the pole that is attracted by the Earth's north magnet pole, when the magnet is suspended so it can turn freely. Since opposite poles attract, the north magnetic pole on the Earth is really the south pole of its magnetic field,

the place where the field is directed downward into the Earth. The positions of the magnetic poles can be defined in at least two ways, locally or globally. The local definition is the point where the magnetic field is vertical. This can be determined by measuring the inclination. The inclination of the Earth's field is 90 degrees downwards at the north magnetic pole and negative 90 degrees upwards at the south magnetic pole. The two poles wander independently of each other and are not directly opposite each other on the globe.

Movements of up to 40 kilometers or 25 miles per year have been observed for the North Magnetic Pole. Over the last 180 years, the North Magnetic Pole has been migrating northwestward from Cape Adelaide in the Boothia Peninsula in 1831 to 600 kilometers or 370 miles. from Resolute Bay in 2001. The magnetic equator is the line where the inclination is zero.

The magnet field is horizontal. The global definition of the Earth's field is based on a mathematical model. If a line is drawn through the center of the Earth, parallel to the moment of the best-fitting magnetic dipole, the two positions where it intersects the Earth's surface, are called the North and South-Gyipel. geomagnetic poles. If the Earth's magnetic field were perfectly dipolar, the geomagnetic poles and magnetic dip poles would coincide and compasses would point towards them. However, the Earth's

field has a significant non-dipolar contribution, so the poles do not coincide and compasses do not generally point at either. Earth's magnetic field, predominantly dipolar at its surface is distorted further out by the solar wind. This is a stream of charged particles leaving the sun's corona and accelerating to a speed of 200 to 1,000 kilometers per second. They carry with them a magnetic field, the interplanetary magnetic field, IMF. The solar wind exerts a pressure, and if it could reach Earth's atmosphere, it would eroded. However, it is kept away by the pressure of the Earth's magnetic field.

The magnetopause, the area where the pressures balance, is the boundary of the magnetosphere. Despite its name, the magnetosphere is asymmetric, with the sunward side being about 10 Earth radii out, but the other side stretching out in a magnetotail that extends beyond 200 Earth radii. Sunward of the magnetopause is the boshok, the area where the solar wind slows abruptly. Inside the magnetosphere is the plasmosphere, a donut-shaped region containing low-energy charged particles or plasma. This region begins at a height of 60 kilometers, extends up to 3 or 4 Earth radii, and includes the ionosphere. This region rotates with the Earth. There are also two concentric tire-shaped regions, called the Van Allen radiation belts, with high-energy ions.

The inner belt is one to two Earth radii out, while the outer belt is at four to seven Earth radii. The plasma sphere and van Allen belts have partial overlap with the extent of overlap varying greatly with solar activity, As well as deflecting the solar wind, the Earth's magnetic field deflects cosmic rays, high-energy-charged particles that are mostly from outside the solar system. Many cosmic rays are kept out of the solar system by the Sun's magnetosphere, or heliosphere. By contrast, astronauts on the moon risk exposure to radiation. Anyone who had been on the moon surface during a particularly violent solar eruption in 2005 would have received a lethal dose. Some of the charged particles do get into the magnetosphere.

These spiral around field lines, bouncing back and forth between the poles several times per second. In addition, positive ions slowly drift westward and negative ions drift eastward, giving rise to a ring current. This current reduces the magnetic field of the Earth's surface. Particles that penetrate the ionosphere and collide with the atoms there give rise to the lights of the aurorae while also emitting x-rays. The varying conditions in the magnetosphere known as space weather are largely driven by solar activity. If the solar wind is weak, the magnetosphere expands, while if it is strong, it compresses the magnetosphere and more of it gets in. periods of particularly intense activity called geomagnetic storms can occur when a coronal mass ejection erupts above the sun

and sends a shockwave through the solar system such a wave can take just two days to reach the earth geomagnetic storms can cause a lot of disruption the Halloween storm of 2003 damaged more than a third of NASA's satellites The largest documented storm, the Carrington event, occurred in 1859. It included current strong enough to disrupt telegraph lines, and Aurorae were reported as far south as Hawaii. The geomagnetic field changes on timescales from milliseconds to millions of years. Shorter timescales mostly arise from currents in the ionosphere and magnetosphere, and some

changes can be traced to geomagnetic storms or daily variations and currents. Changes over time scales of a year or more mostly reflect changes in the Earth's interior, particularly the iron-rich core. Frequently, the Earth's magnetosphere is hit by solar flares, causing geomagnetic storms, provoking displays of aurorae. A short-term instability of the magnetic field is measured with the K index. Data from Themis show that the magnetic field, which interacts with the solar wind, is reduced when the magnetic orientation is aligned between sun and Earth,

opposite to the previous hypothesis. During forthcoming solar storms, this could result in blackouts and disruptions in artificial satellites. Changes in Earth's magnetic field on a time scale, of a year or more are referred to as secular variation. Over hundreds of years, magnetic declination is observed to vary over tens of degrees. The animation shows how global declinations have changed over the last few centuries. The direction and intensity of the dipole change over time.

Over the last two centuries, the dipole strength has been decreasing at a rate of about 6.3% per century. At this rate of decrease, the field would be negligible in about 1600 years. However, this strength is about average for the last 7,000 years, and the current rate of change is not unusual. A prominent feature in the non-dipolar part of the secular variation is a westward drift at a rate of about 0.2 degrees per year. This drift is not the same everywhere and has varied over time. The globally average drift has been westward since about 1400 AD, but eastward between about 1,000 AD and 1400 AD. Changes that predate magnetic observatories are recorded in archaeological and geological materials.

Such changes are referred to as paleomagnetic, secular variation or paleo-secular variation PSV. The records typically include long periods of small change with occasional large changes reflecting geomagnetic excursions and reversals. In July 2020, scientists report that analysis of simulations and a recent observational field model show that maximum rates of directional change of Earth's magnetic fields reached approximately 10 degrees per year, almost 100 times faster than current changes, and 10 times faster than previously thought. Studies of lava flows on Steen's

Mountain, Oregon indicate that the magnetic field could have shifted at a rate of up to 6 degrees per day at some time in Earth's history, which significantly challenges the popular understanding of how the Earth's magnetic field works. This finding was later attributed to unusual rock magnetic properties of the lava flow under study, not rapid field change, by one of the original authors of the 1995 study. Although generally Earth's field is approximately dipolar, with an axis that is nearly aligned with the rotational axis, occasionally the north and south geomagnetic poles trade places.

Evidence for these geomagnetic reversals can be found in basalts, sediment cores taken from the ocean floors, and seafloor magnetic anomalies. Reversals occur nearly randomly in time, with intervals between reversals ranging from less than 0.1 million years to as much as 50 million years. The most recent geomagnetic reversals, called the Bruns Maguayama reversal, occurred about 780,000 years ago. A related phenomenon, a geomagnetic excursion, takes the dipole axis across the equator and then back to the original polarity.

The Lechamp event is an example of an excursion, occurring during the last ice age 41,000 years ago. The past magnetic field is recorded mostly by such a year. strongly magnetic materials, particularly iron oxides such as magnetite, that can carry a permanent magnetic moment. This remnant magnetization or remnants can be acquired in more than one way. In lava flows, the direction of the field is frozen in small minerals as they cool, giving rise to a thermal remnant magnetization. In sediments, the orientation of magnetic particles acquires a slight bias towards the magnetic field as they deposited on an ocean floor or lake bottom. This is called detrital remnant magnetization.

Thermo-remant magnetization is the main source of the magnetic anomalies around mid-ocean ridges. As the seafloor spreads, magma wells up from the mantle, cools to form new basaltic crust on both, sides of the ridge and is carried away from it by seafloor spreading. As it cools, it records the direction of the Earth's field. When the Earth's field reverses, new basalt records the reverse direction. The result is a series of stripes that are symmetric about the ridge. A ship towing a magnetometer on the surface of the ocean can detect these stripes

and infer the age of the ocean floor below. This provides information on the rate at which seafloor has spread in the past. Radiometric dating of lava flows has been used to establish a geomagnetic polarity time scale. This forms the basis of magnetostratigraphy, a geophysical correlation technique that can be used to date both sedimentary and volcanic sequences, as well as the seafloor magnetic anomalies. Paleomagnetic studies of Paleo-Archeon lava in Australia and conglomerate in South Africa have concluded that the magnetic field has been present since at least about 3,450 million years ago.

Starting in the late 1800s and throughout the 1900s and later, the overall geomagnetic field has become weaker. The present strong deterioration corresponds to a 10 to 15% decline. and has accelerated since 2000. Geomagnetic intensity has declined almost continuously from a maximum 35% above the modern value from circa year 1 AD. The rate of decrease and the current strengths

are within the normal range of variation, as shown by the record of past magnetic fields recorded in rocks. The nature of Earth's magnetic field is one of heterosodastic, seemingly random fluctuation. An instantaneous measurement of it, or several measurements of it across the span of decades or centuries, are not sufficient to extrapolate an overall trend in the field strength. It has gone up and down in the past for unknown reasons. Also, noting the local intensity of the dipole field or its fluctuation

is insufficient to characterize Earth's magnetic field as a whole, as it is not strictly a dipole field. The dipole component of Earth's field can diminish even while the total magnetic field remains the same or increases. The Earth's magnetic north pole is drifting from northern Canada towards Siberia, with a presently accelerating rate to 10 kilometers per year at the beginning of the 1900s, up to 40 kilometers per year in 2003, and since then has only accelerated. The Earth's magnetic field is believed to be generated by electric currents in the conductive iron

alloys of its core, created by convection currents due to heat escaping from the core. The Earth and most of the planets in the solar system, as well as the sun and other stars, all generate magnetic fields through the motion of electrically conducting fluids. The earth field originates in its core. This is a region of iron alloys extending to about 3,400 kilometers. It is divided into a solid inner core with a radius of 1,220 kilometers and a liquid outer core. The motion of the liquid in the outer core is driven by heat flow from the inner core, core, which is about 6,000 Kelvin's to the core mantle boundary, which is about 3,800

Kelvin's. The heat is generated by potential energy released by heavier materials sinking toward the core, planetary differentiation, the iron catastrophe, as well as decay of radioactive elements in the interior. The pattern of flow is organized by the rotation of the earth, and the presence of the solid inner core. The mechanism by which the Earth generates a magnetic field is known as a geodynamo. The magnetic field is generated by a feedback loop. Current loops generate magnetic fields, ampere secure to law. A changing magnetic field generates an electric field, Faraday's Law,

and the electric and magnetic fields exert a force on the charges that are flowing in currents, the Lawrence force. These effects can be combined in a partial differential equation for the magnetic field, called the magnetic induction equation. The motion of the fluid is sustained by convection, motion driven by buoyancy. The temperature increases towards the center of the earth, and the higher temperature of the fluid lower down makes it buoyant. This buoyancy is enhanced by chemical separation.

As the core cools, some of the molten iron solidifies and is plated to the inner core. In the process, lighter elements are left behind in the fluid, making it lighter. This is called compositional convection. A coriolis effect caused by the overall planetary rotation tends to organize the flow into rolls aligned along the north-south polar axis. The dynamo can amplify a magnetism. field, but it needs a seed field to get it started. For the Earth, this could have been an external magnetic field. Early in its history, the Sun went through a T-T-Tauri phase in which the solar wind would have had a magnetic field orders of magnitude larger than the present solar wind.

However, much of the field may have been screened out by the Earth's mantle. An alternative source is currents in the core mantle boundary driven by chemical reactions or variations in thermal or electric conductivity. Such effects may still provide a small bias that are part of the boundary conditions for the geodynamo. The average magnetic field in the Earth's outer core was calculated to be 25 gauce, 50 times stronger than the field at the surface. Simulating the geodynamo by computer requires numerically solving a set of non-linear partial differential equations

for the magneto-hydrodynamics MHD of the Earth's interior. Simulation of the MHD equations is performed on a 3D grid of points, and the fineness of the grid, which in part determines the realism of the solutions, is limited mainly by computer power. For decades, theorists were confined to creating kinematic dynamo computer models in which the fluid motion is chosen in advance and the effect on the magnetic field calculated. Kinematic dynamo theory was mainly a matter of trying different flow geometries

and testing whether such geometries could sustain a dynamo. The first self-consistent dynamo models, ones that determine both the fluid motions and the magnetic field, were developed by two groups in 1995, one in Japan and one in the United States. The latter received attention because it successfully reproduced some of the characteristics of the Earth's field, including geomagnetic reversals. the oceans contribute to Earth's magnetic field. Sea water is an electrical conductor and therefore interacts with the magnetic field.

As the tides cycle around the ocean basins, the earth water essentially tries to pull the geomagnetic field lines along. Because the salty water is only slightly conductive, the interaction is relatively weak, The strongest component is from the regular lunar tide that happens about twice per day, M2. Other contributions come from ocean swell, eddies, and even tsunamis. The strength of the interaction depends also on the temperature of the ocean water. The entire heat stored in the ocean can now be inferred from observations of the Earth's magnetic field.

electric currents induced in the ionosphere generate magnetic fields, ionospheric dynamo region. Such a field is also generated near where the atmosphere is closest to the sun, causing daily alterations that can deflect surface magnetic fields by as much as one degree. Typical daily variations of field strength are about 25 microtestlas, one part of the in 2000, with variations over a few seconds of typically around one microtessla, one part in 50,000. The Earth's magnetic field strength was measured by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1832, and has been repeatedly measured since then, showing a relative decay of about 10% over the last 150 years. The MagSat satellite and later satellites have used three-axis vector magnetometers to probe the 3D structure of the Earth's magnetic field.

The later Ersted satellite allowed a comparison indicating a dynamic geodynamo in action that appears to be giving rise to an alternative pole under the Atlantic Ocean, west of South Africa. Governments sometimes operate units that specialize in measurement of the Earth's magnetic field. These are geomagnetic observatories, typically part of a National Geological Survey, for example. The British Geological Survey's Esdalemir Observatory. Such observatories can measure and forecast magnetic conditions, such as magnetic storms that sometimes affect communications, electric power, and other human activities. The International Real-Time Magnetic Observatory Network, with over 100 interlinked geomagnetic observatories around the world,

has been recording the Earth's magnetic field since 1991. The military determines local geomagnetic field characteristics in order to detect anomalies in the natural background that might be caused by a significant metallic object such as a submerged submarine. Typically, these magnetic anomaly detectors are flown in aircraft, like the UK's Nimrod or toad as an instrument or an array of instruments from surface ships.

Commercially, geophysical prospecting companies also use magnetic detectors to identify naturally occurring anomalies from ore bodies, such as the, Kursk magnetic anomaly. Magnetometers detect minute deviations in the Earth's magnetic field, caused by iron artifacts, kilns, some types of stone structures, and even ditches and middens in archaeological geophysics. Using magnetic instruments adapted from airborne magnetic anomaly detectors developed during World War II to detect submarines, the magnetic variations across the ocean floor have been mapped.

Bay salt, the iron-rich volcanic rock making up the ocean floor, contains a strongly magnetic mineral, magnetite, and can locally distort compass readings. The distortion was recognized by Atlantic mariners as early as the late 18th century. More important, because the presence of magnetite gives the basalt measurable magnetic properties, These magnetic variations have provided another means to study the deep ocean floor.

When newly formed rock cools, such magnetic materials record the Earth's magnetic field. Each measurement of the magnetic field is at a particular place and time. If an accurate estimate of the field at some other place and time is needed, the measurements must be converted to a model and the model used to make predictions. The most common way of analyzing the global variations in the Earth's magnetic field is to fit the measurements to a set of spherical harmonics. This was first done by Carl Friedrich Gauss. Spherical harmonics are functions that oscillate over the surface of a sphere.

They are the product of two functions, one that depends on latitude and one on longitude. The function of longitude is zero along zero, or more great circles passing through the north and south poles. The number of such nodal lines is the absolute value of the order M. The function of latitude is zero along zero, or more latitude circles. This plus the order is equal to the degree galactic longitude. Each harmonic is equivalent to a particular arrangement of magnetic charges at the center of the earth. A monopole is an isolated magnetic charge, which has never been observed.

A dipole is equivalent to two opposing charges brought close together, and a quadrupole to two dipoles brought together. Spherical harmonics can represent any scalar field function of position that satisfies certain properties. A magnetic field is a vector field, but if it is expressed in Cartesian components, XYZ, each component is the derivative of the same scalar function

called the magnetic potential. Analyses of the Earth's magnetic field use a modified version of the usual spherical harmonics that differ by a multiplicative factor. A least squares fit to the magnetic field measurements gives the Earth's field as the sum of spherical harmonics, each multiplied by the best-fitting gauce coefficient. The lowest degree gauze coefficient gives the contribution of an isolated magnetic charge,

so it is zero. The next three coefficients determine the direction and magnitude of the dipole contribution. The best-fitting dipole is tilted at an angle of about 10 degrees with respect to the rotational axis. The International Association of Geomagnetism and Eronomy maintains a standard global field model called the International Geomagnetic Reference Field, IGRF. It is updated every five years. The 11th generation model, IGRF-11, was developed using data. from satellites, and a world network of geomagnetic observatories. The spherical harmonic expansion was truncated at degree 10 with 120 coefficients until 2000. Subsequent models are truncated at degree 13, 195 coefficients.

Another global field model called the World Magnetic Model is produced jointly by the United States national centers for environmental information, formerly the National Geophysical Data Center, and the British Geological Survey. This model truncates at degree 12, 168 coefficients, with an approximate spatial resolution of 3,000 kilometers. It is the model used by the United States Department of Defense, the Ministry of Defense, United Kingdom, the United States Federal, Aviation Administration, FAA, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, and the International Hydrographic Organization as well as in many civilian navigation systems. The above models only take into account the main field at the core mantle boundary.

Although generally good enough for navigation, higher accuracy use cases require smaller-scale magnetic anomalies and other variations to be considered. Some examples are the comprehensive modeling, CM approach, by the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, and GSFC, and the Danish Space Research Institute. CM attempts to reconcile data with greatly varying temporal and spatial resolution from ground and satellite sources. The latest version as of 2022 is CM5 of 2016. It provides separate components for main field plus lithosphere, crustal, m2 tidal, and primary-induced magnetosphere, ionosphere variations. The U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information developed the enhanced magnetic model, EMM, which extends to degree and order 790, and resolves magnetic anomalies down to a wavelength of 56 kilometers.

It was compiled from satellite, marine, aeromagnetic, and ground magnetic surveys. As of 2018, the latest version, EMM 2017, includes data from the European Space Agency's swarm satellite mission. For historical data about the main field, the IGRF may be used back to year 1900. A specialized GUFM-1 model, estimated GUFM-1 model, back to year 1590 using ship's logs. Paleomagnetic research has produced models dating back to 10,000 BCE. Animals, including birds and turtles, can detect the Earth's magnetic field and use the field to navigate during migration.

Some researchers have found that cows and wild deer tend to align their bodies north-south while relaxing, but not when the animals are under-harm. high-voltage power lines, suggesting that magnetism is responsible. Other researchers reported in 2011 that they could not replicate those findings using different Google Earth images. Very weak electromagnetic fields disrupt the magnetic compass used by European Robbins and other songbirds, which use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate. Neither power lines nor cell phone signals are to blame for the electromagnetic field effect

on the birds. Instead, the culprits have frequencies between 2 kHz and 5 megahertz. These include AM radio signals and ordinary electronic equipment that might be found in businesses or private homes.