The Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Weakening on a Patch Near South America — Scientists Are Worried
Imagine a mysterious ball of fire exploding within a human body with so much force that it throws the entire system off balance. Sadly enough, this is exactly what’s happening on Earth these days. The electromagnetic field, which is the outer boundary made up of a circuit of electric currents, has been ripped off by an unrestrained spilling of molten mantle material into the outer core, thanks to the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA). Pulsing somewhere on a patch where South America is located, this “dent” a.k.a. SAA is slowly, subtly weakening the planet’s magnetic field. To make matters worse, scientists have recently noticed a massive ballooning of this dent, according to a study published in the Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors.
Typically, the electric currents hissing in the Earth’s magnetic field are generated by the liquid swirls of iron in the inner core. This field acts as the “flesh” or the “sheath” of the planet, offering protection against harmful cosmic radiation, solar flares, and other space anomalies. SAA is the patch where the magnetic field is the weakest. Due to the inner core energy leaking into the outer core, the electric currents in this patch are withdrawing back into the core, instead of radiating out of the core. The drama has been going on since 2014, and as it continues to weaken, it threatens the planet and its life as a whole.
SAA has already ballooned in size and is now splitting. If this split continues to expand, it could soon rip away the protective boundary of Earth. Loss of the protective boundary would make Earth extremely vulnerable to solar radiation as well as the space debris flying around. Some spacecraft and satellites have already encountered disturbances in their functioning due to SAA. If the radiation succeeds in entering the planet’s atmosphere, it could start interfering with electricity and power-based objects.
Critical hardware would get damaged. Power grids would experience shutdowns, probably blackouts. Data will be corrupted. Computers will be knocked off into malfunction, crashes, or soft errors. Information bits will be flipped or damaged in the memory cells. No one knows the fate of SAA, or Earth in general, but thanks to ESA’s Swarm satellite mission that the current status of SAA has finally come under attention. Swarm hosts a trio of satellites, namely Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie. These three guys hover around in space, keeping an eye on the intricacies of the Earth’s magnetic field. After receiving data from the trio, scientists documented them in a geomagnetic field model to extract the latest ongoings of SAA.
Apart from revealing the status of SAA, the three guys also revealed crucial information about how Earth’s magnetic field has evolved between 2014 and 2025. In itself, SAA has expanded by 0.9% of Earth’s surface area. In Canada, the field has diminished in size by 0.65% of Earth’s surface area. In contrast, a field in Siberia has grown in size by 0.42% of Earth’s surface area. Lead author Chris Finlay, Professor of Geomagnetism at the Technical University of Denmark, said in a press release, “It’s changing differently towards Africa than it is near South America. There’s something special happening in this region that is causing the field to weaken in a more intense way.” In the future, perhaps, they may reveal some actionable steps humans can take to prevent this weakening of the magnetic field.
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