June 8 (UPI) -- A South Atlantic rapid geomagnetic field decrease known as the South Atlantic Anomaly led to speculation that Earth's magnetic polarity was reversing.
But a new study, published this week in the journal PNAS, suggests the reversal may not be happening after all.
"We have mapped changes in the Earth's magnetic field over the past 9,000 years, and anomalies like the one in the South Atlantic are probably recurring phenomena linked to corresponding variations in the strength of the Earth's magnetic field," lead study author Andreas Nilsson, a geologist at Lund University in Sweden, said in a press release.
Nilsson said that, based on the new modeling, researchers have concluded that Earth is not heading toward a polarity reversal.
Earth's magnetic field is not stable, and polarity reversals where the North and South poles flip has happened on average roughly every 200,000 years.
