Overview
- Researchers combined nearly 30 years of magnetic data from ground stations and satellites to show that flow beneath the equatorial Pacific switched from a weak westward drift to a strong eastward movement around 2010.
- The reconstruction uses records from 1997 through 2025, including ESA’s Swarm and CryoSat, Germany’s CHAMP and Denmark’s Ørsted, to separate signals from the core, crust, oceans and atmosphere.
- Authors report the eastward anomaly began to ebb by about 2020, leaving open whether the reversal was a short-lived pulse, part of a repeating oscillation, or a move toward a new equilibrium.
- Scientists link the Pacific reversal to other rapid geomagnetic changes such as the 2017 geomagnetic 'jerk' and say the pattern may reflect processes originating deeper in the core.
- There is no immediate danger to life or Earth’s magnetic shield, but the finding matters for models used in navigation, satellite operations and space‑weather forecasting and it underlines the need for continued observations and improved core models.