Equatorial auroral records reveal dynamics of the paleo-West Pacific geomagnetic anomaly.

Localized regions of low geomagnetic intensity such as the South Atlantic Anomaly allow energetic particles from the Van Allen radiation belt to precipitate into the atmosphere and have been linked to a signature in the form of red aurora-like airglow visible to the naked eye. Smoothed global geomagnetic models predict a low-intensity West Pacific Anomaly (WPA) during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries characterized by a simple time dependence. Here, we link the WPA to an independent database of equatorial aurorae recorded in Seoul, South Korea.

Melting of the Earth's inner core.

The Earth's magnetic field is generated by a dynamo in the liquid iron core, which convects in response to cooling of the overlying rocky mantle. The core freezes from the innermost surface outward, growing the solid inner core and releasing light elements that drive compositional convection. Mantle convection extracts heat from the core at a rate that has enormous lateral variations.