research topic: investigation of links between secular variations in the earth's magnetic field and climatic/ orbital parameters. is there any connection between the variations in the earth's magnetic field and climate? in order to get an answer, it is neccessary to understand the linkage between the reconstructed Earth magnitc field, magnetic rock parameters and climate.

executive summary: the aim of this project is to apply and develop modern techniques of nonlinear data analysis to study complex dynamical relationships between the variations of the earth's magnetic field and of the climate during the last 100,000 years. we mainly intend to study phase stability and nonlinear correlations of these multivariate data based on new approaches of synchronization analysis and maximal correlations. problems of special interests are to test for a possible phase delay between climate signals and the relative palaeointensity, to study the influence of long-term variations, especially in the sub-milankovitch range, and to analyse excursions of relative palaeointensity in detail. the nonlinear analysis of sediment data will be mainly based on the sediment investigations performed in the group of prof.~negendank (geoforschungszentrum potsdam) and in the group of prof.~bleil (university of bremen).

we will also build up a toolbox of data analysis techniques including modern as well as standard methods; it will be available for other projects in this special research programme.

data: measurements of variations in the inclination represent the secular variations in the earth's magnetic field; with modern methods, the linkage with climate will be analysed. the following parameters are of major interest:
the climate controls the weathering of rocks and, following the deposition of magnetic minerals in lakes. this results in a changing in magnetic parameters (remanent magnetization, susceptibility etc.). furthermore, the d¹⁸O data series (GISP2) is a proxy of mean global temperature at the northern hemisphere. finally, changes in orbital parameters (eccentricity, obliquity and precession) controls the Earth's climate.

disturbations during deposition of the sediments and the unknown, possibly nonlinear interactions between climate and Earth's magnetic field require nonlinear methods of data analysis. currently used methods are: CRP and ACE

for more:

• Final report of this project: Nonlinear Phase and Correlation Analysis of Palaeomagnetic and Palaeoclimatic Records, DFG SPP 1097, 2003
• PALEOMAGNETISM: Magnetic Domains to Geologic Terranes, By Robert F. Butler, Originally published by Blackwell Scientific Publication 1991.
• Geomagnetic variations: Spatio-temporal variations, processes and impacts on the system Earth (Udo)
• Schwerpunktprogramm 1097 Erdmagnetische Variationen
• Geodynamics Branch Activities (NASA)
• Pointers to Magnetism related sites
• NGDC
• Compute Values of Earth's Magnetic Field (online)