A Local Intermittency Measure (LIM) approach to the detection of geomagnetic jerks

In the present work we investigate the temporal distributions of the geomagnetic jerks occurring in the last three decades of the 20th century using a new method of analysis based on the wavelet transform: the Local Intermittency Measure (LIM). This method, which allows us to single out intermittent structures within a given time series, was applied to geomagnetic monthly means time series of the eastward magnetic field component (Y) of 44 worldwide observatories. We study the bimodal distribution of the jerk occurrence in time for the 1978 and 1991 events and point out a local/regional jerk in South Africa and in the Pacific Ocean which happened around 1986. The worldwide character of the 1999 geomagnetic jerk is also investigated integrating the LIM analysis with the traditional straight-line fit.