Reconstruction of the sector structure of the interplanetary magnetic field by geomagnetic station data

Abstract

This paper describes a new method for reconstructing the polarity of the interplanetary magnetic field. The technique is based on the Svalgaard–Mansurov effect. We ause geomagnetic data of high?latitude stations with a long observation period, including the presatellite era. This method is designed to improve the quality and accuracy of reconstructed polarity, complementing the results of previous methods of Svalgaard (1975) and Vennerström et al. (2001). For the large presatellite period from 1926, the accuracy of the method is estimated to be around 89% of overlaps with the interplanetary magnetic field polarity determined from sat? ellite data.