Illustration for the Excursion project

Sometimes the magnetic field of the Earth goes on an excursion: the magnetic poles can wander up to very low latitudes, and sometimes are difficult to define. Differently than geomagnetic reversals, on an excursion the field goes back to its preceding polarity.

This illustration was made for a big project of Dr. Sanja Panovska. The magnetic field lines represent the field shape based on one of her models for the Laschamps excursion, which happened about 41,000 years ago. The lines show a multipolar and complex magnetic field, and we can see the field extensions down to their source, the core. What was going on deep down the core with the geodynamo at that time during the excursion?