Geomagnetic field shielding over the last one hundred thousand years

Abstract

The geomagnetic field prevents energetic particles, such as galactic cosmic rays, from directly interacting with the Earth’s atmosphere. The geomagnetic field is not static but constantly changing, and over the last 100,000 years, several geomagnetic excursions occurred. During geomagnetic field excursions, the field strength is significantly decreased and the field morphology is strongly influenced by non-dipole components, and more cosmic ray particles can access the Earth’s atmosphere. Paleomagnetic field models provide a global view of the long-term geomagnetic field evolution, however, with individual spatial and temporal resolution and uncertainties. Here, we reconstruct the geomagnetic shielding effect over the last 100,000 years by calculating the geomagnetic cutoff rigidity using four global paleomagnetic field models, i.e., the GGF100k, GGFSS70, LSMOD.2, and CALS10k.2 model. We compare results for overlapping periods and find that the model selection is crucial to constrain the cutoff rigidity variation. However, all models indicate that the non-dipole components of the geomagnetic field are not negligible for estimating the long-term geomagnetic shielding effect. We provide a combined record of global cutoff rigidities using the best available model for individual time intervals. Our results provide the possibility to estimate the cosmogenic isotope production rate and cosmic radiation dose rate covering the last 100,000 years according to the best current knowledge about geomagnetic field evolution, and will be useful in further long-term solar activity and climate change reconstruction.