'Completely new' type of magnetic wave found surging through Earth's core

livescience.com/ ^ | Brandon Specktor

[BenLurkin]

Scientists have detected a completely new type of magnetic wave that surges through Earth's outer core every seven years, warping the strength of our planet's magnetic field in the process.

The waves — dubbed "Magneto-Coriolis" waves because they move along the Earth’s axis of rotation, per the Coriolis effect — creep from East to West in tall columns that can travel up to 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) per year, the researchers wrote in a March 21 paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using a fleet of European Space Agency (ESA) satellites, the team pinpointed the mysterious waves to the outermost layer of Earth's liquid outer core, right where that layer meets the rocky mantle — roughly 1,800 miles (2,900 km) below the planet's surface.

According to the researchers, the existence of these waves could help explain mysterious fluctuations in the planet's magnetic field, which is generated by the movement of liquid iron in the planet's outer core. Satellite measurements of the magnetic field taken over the last 20 years show that the field's strength dips every seven years or so, coinciding with the oscillations of these newfound waves.

The source of these waves remains a mystery for now, but they likely stem from "disturbances deep within the Earth's [outer] core," Gillet said.

It's also likely that these waves aren't the only ones oscillating through the core-mantle boundary, Gillet added. While the Magneto-Coriolis waves explain some of the seven-year magnetic field fluctuations observed by Swarm and other sensors, other as-yet-undiscovered waves with even longer periodicities could account for magnetic field variations on longer timescales, Gillet said. To discover such waves, researchers will just have to keep the...

[Ranxerox]

Global warming causes gravitational magnetic perturbations. Or something.

You know, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that all these global warming phenomenon are caused by changes in the Earth's core, and not green house gasses from ICE. remember you heard it here first...well, second after your post.