Abstract
The debated question on the possible relation between the Earth’s magnetic field and climate has been usually focused on direct correlations between different time series representing both systems. However, the physical mechanism able to potentially explain this connection is still an open issue. Finding hints about how this connection could work would suppose an important advance in the search of an adequate physical mechanism. Here, we propose an innovative information-theoretic tool, i.e. the transfer entropy, as a good candidate for this scope because is able to determine, not simply the possible existence of a connection, but even the direction in which the link is produced. We have applied this new methodology to two real time series, the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) area extent at the Earth’s surface (representing the geomagnetic field system) and the Global Sea Level (GSL) rise (for the climate system) for the last 300 years, to measure the possible information flow and sense between them. This connection was previously suggested considering only the long-term trend while now we study this possibility also in shorter scales. The new results seem to support this hypothesis, with more information transferred from the SAA to the GSL time series, with about 90% of confidence level. This result provides new clues on the existence of a link between the geomagnetic field and the Earth’s climate in the past and on the physical mechanism involved because, thanks to the application of the transfer entropy, we have determined that the sense of the connection seems to go from the system that produces geomagnetic field to the climate system. Of course, the connection does not mean that the geomagnetic field is fully responsible for the climate changes, rather that it is an important driving component to the variations of the climate.
Highlights
The possible relationship between the Earth’s climate and geomagnetic field has been highly debated in the last fifty years (e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]) but it is still an open question
In order to avoid a future bias in the computation of the Transfer Entropy (TE), we choose the same number of bins S for both time series i.e., equal to 4 due to larger bin sizes are usually favored in the literature because show the differences more sharply [46]
We have applied for the first time a recent statistical tool, transfer entropy, to shed light on the question of a possible link between the Earth’s magnetic field and climate and provide new perspectives in its future analysis
Summary
The possible relationship between the Earth’s climate and geomagnetic field has been highly debated in the last fifty years (e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]) but it is still an open question. The possible relationship between the Earth’s climate and geomagnetic field has been highly debated in the last fifty years [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]) but it is still an open question. LIMADOU, for providing partial financial support to this research. The commercial funder Serco SpA provided support in the form of salaries for author EQ, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
