satellitemagneticanomaliesforlithosphericexploration-nasa.docVIP

SATELLITE MAGNETIC ANOMALIES FOR LITHOSPHERIC EXPLORATION Ralph R.B. von Frese and Hyung Rae Kim Dept. of Geological Sciences, The Ohio State University Columbus, OH 43210 USA 1. Introduction Significant new and unique constraints for understanding regional petrologic variations of the crust and upper mantle, and crustal thickness and thermal perturbations as generalized in Figure 1 are available from magnetic anomalies mapped in low-Earth orbit by NASA’s POGO and Magsat, US-Argentina-Chile’s SAC-C, Denmark’s ?rsted, and Germany’s CHAMP satellite missions. Satellite magnetic anomalies are commonly presented and analyzed as predictions from global spherical harmonic models. However, these predictions commonly do not resolve local anomaly attributes to the detail that is available in the local data coverage. Further local corruptions of the predictions result from coefficient errors due to using global data with gaps and uneven coverage, and variable data measurement and processing errors. Figure 1. Lithospheric sources of satellite magnetic anomalies. For example, spherical harmonic magnetic models are typically based on orbits that have been screened for external field activity in terms of planetary indices (e.g., Kp or Ae) derived at ground-based observatories. However, over a local region the indices commonly show little or no correlation to local disturbances as revealed by the data variances in the orbital segments covering the region (e.g., Alsdorf et al., 1994; Kim, 2002). Figure 2 shows an example of this poor correlation for a selected Antarctic set of ?rsted data orbits. The horizontal line in each insert is for Kp = 2+ that is typically the maximum value allowed in selecting orbits for global anomaly maps (e.g., Langel Hinze, 1999). However, as shown in Figure 2.A, the use of this planetary index criterion would reject roughly 335 orbits (35%) from the 952 ascending orbits across the Antarctic that are acceptable based on local data var