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Mysterious anomaly over the South Atlantic, NASA warns of unusual changes in the Earth's magnetic field
2025-11-19 21:21:47 / MISTERE&KURIOZITETE
For years, NASA has been observing a strange anomaly in Earth's magnetic field, a giant area of lower magnetic intensity in the atmosphere, stretching between South America and southwestern Africa.
This emerging phenomenon is called the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) and has been troubling scientists for decades, especially NASA experts. The reason? Spacecraft and satellites (including the International Space Station) pass directly through the SAA as it orbits Earth at low altitude, according to Science Alert.
During these transits, the weakening of the magnetic field within the anomaly means that technological systems on ships and satellites can short-circuit and malfunction if hit by high-energy protons coming from the Sun.
This can cause significant data loss and even permanent damage to critical equipment. For this reason, satellite operators are required to regularly shut down their systems before their equipment enters the SAA area.
Reducing these risks is one of the main reasons why NASA constantly monitors the anomaly, another reason is that its enigma represents a great opportunity to study a complex and still not fully understood phenomenon.
What could be causing the anomaly?
“The magnetic field is actually a superposition of fields created by many current sources,” geophysicist Terry Sabaka of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center explained in 2020.
The main source is thought to be a turbulent ocean of molten iron within the Earth's outer core, thousands of kilometers below the surface. The movement of this mass creates electric currents that shape the Earth's magnetic field, but not always uniformly.
A giant, high-density rock structure called the African Low-Velocity Shear Wave Province, located about 2,900 kilometers beneath the African continent, is believed to disrupt the creation of the magnetic field and cause it to weaken, a process also facilitated by the tilt of the Earth's magnetic axis.
“The observed anomaly can also be explained by the weakening of the dominance of the dipolar field in that area,” geophysicist and mathematician Weijia Kuang, also of the Goddard center, said in 2020. “Specifically, a local field of opposite polarity is strongly developing in the SAA region, making the magnetic intensity much weaker than in the surrounding areas.”
The anomaly is being split into two parts
Although many aspects of this anomaly still remain unclear, researchers are constantly discovering new data on this strange phenomenon.
A 2016 study led by NASA helioscientist Ashley Greeley showed that the SAA is slowly shifting. It even appears to be splitting into two distinct segments, each with its own center of minimum intensity within the wider area of the anomaly. It's not yet known what this means for the future of the South Atlantic Anomaly.
However, studies suggest that the SAA is not a new phenomenon. According to research published in July 2020, this anomaly is a magnetic event that may have occurred cyclically for at least 11 million years.
A 2024 study also found that SAA has an impact on the appearance of auroras on Earth. And more recently, in October 2025, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Swarm mission, a trio of satellites mapping the geomagnetic field, revealed even more complex new details.
“It varies differently towards Africa than it does near South America,” explains geophysicist Chris Finlay of the Technical University of Denmark. “Something special is happening in this region that is causing the field to weaken more strongly.”
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