Hi there.

Please forgive me if this question has been asked before or is just ridiculously obvious, I'm relatively new to this topic, and this forum. You see, I recently stumbled on to the topic a topic regarding earth's magnetic field, specifically that it's getting weaker. I suffer from an anxiety disorder and fell into a bit of a rabbit hole, one I'm still trying to claw my way out of. Which is where my question comes in. I've read in multiple places that the earths magnetic field decreased around 10-12% in around 200 years or something similar. However, I keep coming across an article from 2014 that says SWARM suggests the rate is actually 5% every decade. I'm not sure which is more credible even though most modern articles I read reference the former. Was the supposed data from 2014 disproven? Did the rate of weakening speed up in recent years, and if so should I be worried?

Probably "Other" is the right place.

Though, Earth still has an atmosphere after however many years the Earth has had one. So, it hasn't yet been blown away due to the lack of a magnetic field like Mars. We're not loosing Earth's magnetic field until the core cools in however many million years.

I'd take a guess you got into pole reversals, where we don't loose the protection of Earth's magnetic field. It doesn't matter what period in time is chosen, the magnetic field is always changing. So, what is happening now is normal in the grand scheme of things. Our short time span is just being tracked now to see what it might be doing next, like the weather forecast next week.

4 hours ago, SomewhatShaken said:

Hi there.

Please forgive me if this question has been asked before or is just ridiculously obvious, I'm relatively new to this topic, and this forum. You see, I recently stumbled on to the topic a topic regarding earth's magnetic field, specifically that it's getting weaker. I suffer from an anxiety disorder and fell into a bit of a rabbit hole, one I'm still trying to claw my way out of. Which is where my question comes in. I've read in multiple places that the earths magnetic field decreased around 10-12% in around 200 years or something similar. However, I keep coming across an article from 2014 that says SWARM suggests the rate is actually 5% every decade. I'm not sure which is more credible even though most modern articles I read reference the former. Was the supposed data from 2014 disproven? Did the rate of weakening speed up in recent years, and if so should I be worried?

It has indeed been asked many times before. See here for a compilation of threads on it.

As for the 2014 article you reference, it's been explicitly addressed many times too. It's an egregiously misleading piece of pop sci that totally mixes up the overall changes and the localized field changes, directly comparing the two and not understanding that they refer to completely separate things. It would be a bit like measuring the temperature rise in an oven happening at a rate of 10 °C/minute and then saying that it seems like global warming is happening faster than we thought, since Earth is warming at 10 °C/minute. Here is the offending statement:

Previously, researchers estimated the field was weakening about 5 percent per century, but the new data revealed the field is actually weakening at 5 percent per decade, or 10 times faster than thought. As such, rather than the full flip occurring in about 2,000 years, as was predicted, the new data suggest it could happen sooner.

That is a blatant misrepresentation of the findings. In reality that 5% per decade rate refers specifically to a very localized area called the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), which had been found to have decreased by 10% in 20 years. This anomaly has been addressed in the other topics as well, so I suggest you go read them; essentially it seems to be a long-lived feature that has been with us for at least 11 million years, likely due to subsurface structures and processes.

As for the actual results, this more recent summary by ESA themselves makes the distinction abundantly clear:

Over the last 200 years, the magnetic field has lost around 9% of its strength on a global average. A large region of reduced magnetic intensity has developed between Africa and South America and is known as the South Atlantic Anomaly.

I've even sent an email to Live Science about it, and contacted the author herself too, but they just don't seem to care enough to correct it.

6 minutes ago, Philalethes said:

As for the 2014 article you reference, it's been explicitly addressed many times too. It's an egregiously misleading piece of pop sci that totally mixes up the overall changes and the localized field changes, directly comparing the two and not understanding that they refer to completely separate things. It would be a bit like measuring the temperature rise in an oven happening at a rate of 10 °C/minute and then saying that it seems like global warming is happening faster than we thought, since Earth is warming at 10 °C/minute. Here is the offending statement:

That is a blatant misrepresentation of the findings. In reality that 5% per decade rate refers specifically to a very localized area called the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), which had been found to have decreased by 10% in 20 years. This anomaly has been addressed in the other topics as well, so I suggest you go read them; essentially it seems to be a long-lived feature that has been with us for at least 11 million years, likely due to subsurface structures and processes.

As for the actual results, this more recent summary by ESA themselves makes the distinction abundantly clear:

I've even sent an email to Live Science about it, and contacted the author herself too, but they just don't seem to care enough to correct it.

You have no idea how much you just helped me calm down! Thank you, Seriously! And to Jesterface23 as well!