Overview
- Published Feb. 3 in Nature Geoscience, the study reports that continent-sized hot regions beneath Africa and the Pacific have influenced Earth’s field over millions to hundreds of millions of years.
- The work, led by University of Liverpool geomagnetist Andy Biggin with University of Leeds collaborators, integrates global palaeomagnetic observations with long-timescale numerical simulations.
- Findings indicate localized hot zones at the top of the outer core beneath the mantle structures and cooler areas elsewhere, yielding sluggish or stagnant flow under the hot regions and more vigorous flow under cooler regions.
- Model–data reconstructions spanning about 265 million years reproduce key observations, with some magnetic features remaining stable for hundreds of millions of years while others changed substantially.
- The results challenge the time‑averaged bar‑magnet assumption and affect how scientists interpret ancient continental configurations, climate signals, paleobiology, and natural resource formation.