Comparative Evolutionary Analysis of Dipole and Non-Dipole Components of Geomagnetic Energy

Abstract

The total energy of the potential geomagnetic field (up to the core-mantle boundary) is divided into dipole and non-dipole parts, which are determined by their evolution and frequency properties. The calculations presented here are based on the available and sufficiently reliable COV-OBS.x2 geomagnetic field model that covers the period of 1840–2020. The proposed approximations for longer periods are preliminary, as further work is required to estimate errors through comparison with other historical observational and paleomagnetic models of the geomagnetic field, as well as with numerical models of the geodynamo. The actual dipole energy (about 5 EJ) turned out to be only three times higher than the non-dipole energy, rather than the previously reported one order or more. It was found that the dipole energy decreases relatively slowly and monotonically, while the non-dipole part changes much faster and quasi-periodically. Therefore, the characteristic times are on the order of one thousand years for the dipole component and on the order of hundreds of years for the non-dipole component, respectively. If the quadrupole and octupole contributions to the geomagnetic field are only considered, which is a natural limitation for paleoand archaeomagnetologists, then the energy of such a “truncated” non-dipole part increases monotonically, and its evolutionary and frequency characteristics become different from the full (up to the 14th spherical harmonic) non-dipole part. The results show that the power or the time derivative of energy varies more significantly compared to the energy, being on the order of one hundred MW for both the dipole and non-dipole parts. Frequency values were obtained by analyzing the power/ energy ratios.