The PINT database: a definitive compilation of absolute palaeomagnetic intensity determinations since 4 billion years ago

Abstract

Summary Palaeomagnetic field intensity measurements, derived from rocks with ages that span geological time, provide a crucial constraint on the evolution of Earth’s deep interior and its magnetic environment. The palaeointensity database PINT has been updated to version v.8.0.0 and includes palaeointensity site-mean records spanning an interval from 50 ka to 4.2 Ga, compiling efforts from the palaeomagnetic community spanning from 1959 to the end of 2019. Nearly all site-mean palaeointensity records have been assessed using the qualitative reliability of palaeointensity (Quality of Palaeointensity, QPI) framework. This updated database brings together and harmonizes prior QPI and PINT compilation efforts into a unified database referred to as the PINT database, incorporating recent efforts since 2014 to assess QPI. The spatio-temporal distribution of the PINT database is analyzed, revealing substantial biases towards young records (from the Brunhes chron) in the Northern hemisphere, and intervals with little to no palaeointensity data with a duration of 10s to 100s of millions of years in the Paleozoic and Precambrian. General QPI compliance is characterized for the PINT database, which shows that the median QPI scores range from 2 to 3 (out of a total possible score of 10), with a positive trend towards increasing QPI scores in studies published after the year 2000. This illustrates an increasing community awareness of what is required to establish confidence in palaeointensity data and an increasing robustness of the large scale interpretations that can be made with these data. We additionally present a description of the long-term average dipole field strength with descriptive statistics for distinct intervals of Earth history.

Paleointensity Estimates From the Pleistocene of Northern Israel: Implications for Hemispheric Asymmetry in the Time‐Averaged Field

“…However, the resulting data set is limited to those studies with measurement level data available. To increase the number of sites, we use the paleointensities in the PINT database (Bono et al., 2022) (available at http://www.pintdb.org/Database). As of January 2022, the PINT database archived results from 4,353 absolute paleointensity sites from 296 unique references.…”

“…We compared the results from our new and re-analyzed data sets with those from the paleointensity (PINT) database Bono et al (2022) and found that in general, low to mid latitude northern hemisphere field strengths are higher than southern hemisphere (mostly Antarctica) and high northerly latitudes (mostly Iceland). The globally averaged PADMs predicted from the PADM2M record of Ziegler et al (2011) are also much lower than those found here.…”

“…Although there are databases that compile published data (e.g., the PINT, and MagIC databases; Bono et al. (2022) and Tauxe et al. (2016), respectively), these contain data derived from very different sampling, laboratory and data analysis approaches and may not reflect the magnetic field strength in an unbiased way.…”

Low Paleointensities and Ar/Ar Ages From Saint Helena Provide Evidence for Recurring Magnetic Field Weaknesses in the South Atlantic

“…Sites where a method without pTRM checks was used, sites that have less than three specimens, and sites that do not either pass the criteria of the SD below 5 ( σ ≤ 5.0 μT) or the criteria of SD over the mean below 25% (σ/F ≤ 25%), were excluded. In Figure 7, the data set from PINT (Bono et al., 2022) is plotted versus age and versus latitude. From Figure 7a, it can be concluded that there is a need for more data that are older than 16 Ma.…”

PSVM: A Global Database for the Miocene Indicating Elevated Paleosecular Variation Relative to the Last 10 Myrs

“…A new covariant giant Gaussian process (GGP) model, following (Bono et al., 2020) was created using our preferred subset of PSVM (CS7 vD ). The PINT database (Biggin et al., 2009; Bono et al., 2022) was used to define the paleointensity record from the Miocene Epoch needed to determine a mean $${g}_{\mathrm{1}}^{\mathrm{0}}$$ value for this model. The selection criteria Nint ( number of successful samples used ) ≥3, σ ( standard deviation ) <5 μT or σ/F ( percentage of the standard deviation over field strength measured ) <25% and only methods that include pTRM (partial thermoremanent magnetization) checks used to check for alteration, were applied to the Miocene data from the PINT database (Engbers et al., 2022).…”