Modelling Secular Variation in the Southwest Pacific

Abstract

A spherical cap harmonic analysis (SCHA) model has been used to derive a high resolution regional model of the geomagnetic field in the southwest Pacific region over the past 400 years. Two different methods, a self-consistent and the gufm1 dipole method, have been used to fill in gaps in the available data. The data used in the analysis were largely measurements of the magnetic field recorded in ships logs on voyages of exploration in the region.  The method chosen for the investigation used a spherical cap of radius