The XIVth IAGA Workshop on Geomagnetic Observatory Instruments, Data Acquisition, and Processing was the first of its kind to take place in China, the country regarded as the birthplace of geomagnetism. These workshops are scheduled to take place every 2 years, and as such, it is an important meeting for all magnetic observatories to attend. These workshops serve to provide the standard of obse...

To stimulate the discussion about possible reasons for whale strandings, we suggest solar driven geomagnetic variations as one further explanation for this phenomenon. Following this hypothesis that whales may strand due to geomagnetic disturbances we compared annual means of stranding event numbers of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) along the North Sea coasts with yearly averaged numbers...

The geomagnetic activity of the Dst index is analyzed using wavelet transforms and it is shown that the Dst index possesses properties associated with self-affine fractals. For example, the power spectral density obeys a powerlaw dependence on frequency, and therefore the Dst index can be viewed as a self-affine fractal dynamic process. In fact, the behaviour of the Dst index, with a Hurst expo...

Local scaling and singularity properties of solar wind and geomagnetic time series were analysed using Hölder exponents α. It was shown that in analysed cases due to multifractality of fluctuations α changes from point to point. We argued there exists a peculiar interplay between regularity / irregularity and amplitude characteristics of fluctuations which could be exploited for improvement of ...

The effects of thermospheric winds and electric fields on the ionospheric FZlayer are controlled by the geometry of the magnetic field, and so vary with latitude and longitude. We adopt a simple model of the daytime F2-layer and study the effects at midlatitudes (25O-65” geographic) of three processes that accompany geomagnetic storms : (i) thermospheric changes due to aurora1 heating; (ii) equ...

The analysis of the f oF2 ionosonde data acquired at mid and high latitudes reveals a general decreasing of the F2 plasma frequency over more than two solar cycles, showing steeper trends over the high latitude stations and, in particular, over Antarctica. A careful analysis of the f oF2 hourly data, opportunely catalogued in different levels of magneto-ionospheric conditions, highlights the ro...

Magnetotactic bacteria from freshwater and marine sediments orient and navigate along geomagnetic field lines. Their magnetotactic response is based on intracellular, single magnetic domains of ferrimagnetic magnetite, which impart a permanent magnetic dipole moment to the cell.