Earth’s magnetic field is gradually weakening in an area that stretches from Africa to South America, and scientists who are trying to understand why. This weakening is also causing technical disturbances in some satellites orbiting Earth. Scientists are using data from the European Space Agency’s Swarm constellation to improve our understanding of this area, which is known as the ‘South Atlantic Anomaly.’ Jürgen Matzka, from the German Research Center for Geosciences, said: ‘The new, eastern minimum of the South Atlantic Anomaly has appeared over the last decade and in recent years is developing vigorously. ‘We are very lucky to have the Swarm satellites in orbit to investigate the development of the South Atlantic Anomaly. ‘The challenge now is to understand the processes in Earth’s core driving these changes.’ The weakened field has been on the radar of experts for years – they know that it has lost nine percent of its intensity over the last 200 years. However, an even larger area of weakness has recently developed between Africa and South America. After analyzing data collected by Swarm, the team found that between 1970 and 2020, the strength in this region has depleted from around 24 000 nanoteslas to 22 000. However, what is more puzzling is that is that the anomaly has grown and moved westward at a pace of around 12 mph. This is definitely not the first time that pole reversal will be happening on the Earth. This event has occurred few times in the history of our planet, as per the scientists and we are long overdue by the average rate at which these reversals take place (roughly every 250,000 years). While this is not going to affect or alarm the general public to a huge extent, it is causing technical difficulties for various satellites and spacecrafts, as the magnetic field getting weaker, charged particles from the cosmos can penetrate through to the altitudes that low-Earth orbiting satellites fly at.