Did Open Solar Magnetic Field Increase during the Last 100 Years: A Reanalysis of Geomagnetic Activity

Long-term geomagnetic activity presented by the aa index has been used to show that the heliospheric magnetic field has more than doubled during the last 100 years. However, serious concern has been raised on the long-term consistency of the aa index and on the centennial rise of the solar magnetic field. Here we reanalyze geomagnetic activity during the last 100 years by calculating the recently suggested IHV (Inter-Hour Variability) index as a measure of local geomagnetic activity for seven stations. We find that local geomagnetic activity at all stations follows the same qualitative long-term pattern: an increase from early 1900s to 1960, a dramatic dropout in 1960s and a (mostly weaker) increase thereafter. Moreover, at all stations, the activity at the end of the 20th century has a higher average level than at the beginning of the century. This agrees with the result based on the aa index that global geomagnetic activity, and thereby, the open solar magnetic field has indeed increased during the last 100 years. However, quantitatively, the estimated centennial increase varies greatly from one station to another. We find that the relative increase is higher at the high-latitude stations and lower at the low and mid-latitude stations. These differences may indicate that the fraction of solar wind disturbances leading to only moderate geomagnetic activity has increased during the studied time interval. We also show that the IHV index needs to be corrected for the long-term change of the daily curve, and calculate the corrected IHV values. Most dramatically, we find the centennial increase in global geomagnetic activity was considerably smaller, only about one half of that depicted by the aa index.