The possibilities of paleomagnetic and geohistorical analyses of “tiny wiggles” short-period marine magnetic anomalies

Abstract

Marine magnetic anomalies of the tiny wiggles (TW) type can be used to solve geohistorical and paleomagnetic problems. The model fields corresponding to Paleocene-Eocene anomalies in the northwest ern Indian Ocean, which were formed during the fast spreading stage, were studied. For these fields, widely used interpretation methods were compared with a method proposed previously by the authors. The testing was performed with first the classical block model and then more complex models reflecting actual processes of oceanic accretion and magnetic field variations in the past. It was shown that the proposed method has advantages for this problem; it gives an error close to the minimum possible error and can adequately be used in interpretations. Spectral and statistical methods are used to estimate the magnetic anomaly resolving power and to study some factors that can exert a distorting influence. In addition, model examples have been used to indicate how the TW determination accuracy is affected by diurnal variations in the main magnetic field (MMF) and by ancient magnetization vector determination errors.