A re-evaluation of the Italian historical geomagnetic catalogue: implications for paleomagnetic dating at active Italian volcanoes

Paleomagnetism is proving to represent one of the
most powerful dating tools of volcanics emplaced in Italy
during the last few centuries/millennia. This method requires
that valuable proxies of the local geomagnetic field (paleo)
secular variation ((P)SV) are available. To this end, we
re-evaluate the whole Italian geomagnetic directional dataset,
consisting of 833 and 696 declination and inclination measurements,
respectively, carried out since 1640AD at several
localities. All directions were relocated via the virtual geomagnetic
pole method to Stromboli (38.8 N, 15.2 E), the
rough centre of the active Italian volcanoes. For declinationonly
measurements, missing inclinations were derived (always
by pole method) by French data (for period 1670–
1789), and by nearby Italian sites/years (for periods 1640–
1657 and 1790–1962). Using post-1825 declination values,
we obtain a 0.46±0.19 yr−1 westward drift of the geomagnetic
field for Italy. The original observation years were
modified, considering such drift value, to derive at a driftcorrected
relocated dataset. Both datasets were found to be in
substantial agreement with directions derived from the field
models by Jackson et al. (2000) and Pavon-Carrasco et al.
(2009). However, the drift-corrected dataset minimizes the
differences between the Italian data and both field models,
and eliminates a persistent 1.6 shift of 1933–1962 declination
values from Castellaccio with respect to other nearly coeval
Italian data. The relocated datasets were used to calculate
two post-1640 Italian SV curves, with mean directions
calculated every 30 and 10 years before and after 1790, respectively.
The curve comparison suggests that both available
field models yield the best available SV curve to perform
paleomagnetic dating of 1600–1800AD Italian volcanics, while the Italian drift-corrected curve is probably preferable
for the 19th century. For the 20th century, the global model
by Jackson et al. (2000) yields more accurate inclination values,
while the declinations from our drift-corrected curve
seem to better represent the local field evolution, at least for
the first half of the century.

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