Earth's magnetic field in the early 19th century from French sources

Andrew Jackson , Art R. T. Jonkers , Mioara Mandea (1) , Anne Murray

1 IPGP - Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris

We present both a description of a new magnetic data set covering predominantly the 18th and 19th centuries and the results derived from it for the small window 1820-1850, from which the bulk of the data originate. The data set comprises measurements of declination taken overwhelmingly on French naval and hydrographic vessels. A list of the vessels is given for one of the data sets. When augmented by extant inclination measurements, the data are capable of resolving the magnetic field at the core-mantle boundary to a high degree of fidelity and thus are a valuable addition to the data set of historical geomagnetic measurements.

Keywords: geomagnetism

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]

Andrew Jackson, Art R. T. Jonkers, Mioara Mandea, Anne Murray. Earth's magnetic field in the early 19th century from French sources. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 2003, 4, pp. 767-782. ⟨10.1029/2002GC000494⟩. ⟨insu-03598415⟩