The Earth’s Coriolis force has been well-known to impact surface waves and normal modes, which is essential to accurately interpret these waves. However, the Coriolis force on body waves has been assumed to be negligible and mostly ignored. It has been previously shown that the Coriolis force impacts polarizations of shear waves, whereas the wavefronts remain unaffected. We expand on the potential influences of Earth’s Coriolis force on shear-wave polarization measurements by conducting 3D numerical simulations for elastic waves generated by earthquake and explosive sources in a radially symmetric, and 3D mantle and crustal models. The Coriolis force can produce polarization anomalies of mantle shear waves up to 7° and core phases, such as SKS and SKKS, up to 4°. Uncorrected shear-wave polarizations due to the Coriolis force can cause an additional source of error (5°–10° in fast direction, and 0.2–0.3 s delay time depending on the method and seismic phase), inaccurate interpretation of station misalignments, and imprecise estimates of the core–mantle boundary topography. We show how to correct for the Coriolis force on teleseismic shear waves using 1D ray tracing for well-isolated phases. We recommend the use of full waveform simulations to accurately account for earthquake sources parameters, poorly isolated phases that could include interfering phase arrivals within the measurement time window, and the effect of the Coriolis force on the polarizations of shear waves.
Recent geomagnetic observations reveal localized oscillations in the field’s secular acceleration at high latitudes, with periods of about 20 yr. Several types of waves in rotating magnetized fluids have been proposed to explain equatorial oscillations with similar high frequencies. Among these are non-axisymmetric Alfvén waves, magneto-Coriolis waves and, in the presence of fluid stratification, magnetic-Archimedes–Coriolis (MAC) waves. We explore the hypothesis that the observed high latitude patterns are the signature of MAC waves by modelling their generation in Earth’s core. We quantitatively assess several generation mechanisms using output from dynamo simulations in a theoretical framework due to Lighthill. While the spatio-temporal structure of the sources from the dynamo simulations are expected to be realistic, their amplitudes are extrapolated to reflect differences between the simulation’s parameter space and Earth-like conditions. We estimate full wave spectra spanning monthly to centennial frequencies for three plausible excitation sources: thermal fluctuations, Lorentz force and magnetic induction. When focusing on decadal frequencies, the Lorentz force appears to be most effective in generating high-latitude MAC waves with amplitude estimates falling within an order of magnitude of observed oscillations. Overall, this study puts forward MAC waves as a viable explanation, in the presence of fluid stratification at the top of Earth’s core, for observed field variations at high latitudes.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 2214244
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10397640
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Geophysical Journal International
- Volume:
- 233
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0956-540X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 1961-1973
- Size(s):
- p. 1961-1973
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract Fluctuations in the paleomagnetic field suggest that the dipole decay time is shorter than expected, based on current estimates for the molecular magnetic diffusivity in the outer core. Similar behavior is observed in turbulent dynamo simulations, where the short magnetic field decay time cannot be attributed to higher‐order decay modes. We interpret the short decay time as a signature of turbulent diffusion and show that mean‐field theory can quantitatively account for the dynamo results. The predictions depend on the amplitude and length scale of the flow that interacts with the magnetic field. We rely on the pairwise balance between Lorentz/Coriolis and buoyancy/Coriolis forces to identify the relevant part of the flow, and use the resulting flow properties to reproduce results from numerical dynamo simulations within their uncertainties. Upon extending these predictions to the paleomagnetic field, we find that the inferred decay time requires a bulk root‐mean‐square velocity less than 0.8–1.2 mm s−1. Somewhat lower velocities have been estimated at the top of the core from observations of secular variation. These results show that velocities in the interior of the core are constrained by paleomagnetic observations, and that the amplitude of this flow cannot substantially exceed estimates at the core surface.
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SUMMARY Earth’s internal magnetic field is dominated by the contribution of the axial dipole whose temporal variations are wide ranging and reflect characteristic timescales associated with geomagnetic reversals and large scale palaeosecular variation, ranging down to decadal and subannual field changes inferred from direct observations. We present a new empirical power spectrum for the axial dipole moment based on composite magnetic records of temporal variations in the axial dipole field that span the frequency range 0.1 to 5 × 105 Myr–1 (periods from 10 million to 2 yr). The new spectrum is used to build a stochastic representation for these time variations, based on an order 3 autoregressive (AR) process and placed in the context of earlier stochastic modelling studies. The AR parameter estimates depend on the frequency of transitions in the spectral regime and may be influenced by Ohmic diffusion, advection and torsional oscillations in Earth’s core. In several frequency ranges across the interval 200–5000 Myr–1(5000 to 200 yr periods) the empirical power spectrum lies above the AR3 model and may be influenced by Magneto–Coriolis (MC) waves in Earth’s core. The spectral shape and parameter estimates provide a potentially useful guide for developing assessments of whether numerical dynamo simulations meet criteria for being considered Earth like.more » « less
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Abstract Observations show that magnetic pulsations with frequencies around 1 mHz are frequently detected simultaneously at different latitudes on the ground, in the inner magnetosphere, and in the solar wind. The coupling between oscillations in the dynamic pressure or magnetic field carried by the solar wind and the ultra‐low frequency (ULF) waves detected on the ground at high latitudes has been suggested in several studies. We present results from a numerical study of ultra‐low‐frequency waves detected by the ground magnetometers at middle latitudes during substorm. We investigate the hypothesis that these waves are generated by the ionospheric feedback instability driven by the large‐scale electric field in the ionosphere. This field is associated with the surface waves propagating along the ambient magnetic field on a strong perpendicular gradient in the plasma density occurring in the equatorial magnetosphere. The gradient in the plasma density is associated with the plasmapause. The plasmapause moves to the middle latitude when the plasmasphere erodes during substorm. The energy from the external driver can be coupled to the large‐scale surface Alfvén waves traveling along the field lines into the ionosphere and generating small‐scale intense ULF waves and field‐aligned currents at middle latitudes. The simulations of the two‐fluid magnetohydrodynamics model confirm this scenario, and the numerical results show a good quantitative agreement with the observations.
