S U M M A R YRecent first principles calculations of the Earth's outer core thermal and electrical conductivities have raised their values by a factor of three. This has significant implications for geodynamo operation, in particular, forcing the development of a stably stratified layer at the core-mantle boundary (CMB). This study seeks to test the hypothesis of a stably stratified layer in the uppermost core by analysing geomagnetic observations made by the CHAMP satellite. An inversion method is utilized that jointly solves for the time-dependent main field and the core surface flow, where we assume the temporal variability of the main field, its secular variation (SV), to be entirely due to advective motion within the liquid outer core. The results show that a large-scale pure toroidal flow, consistent with a stably stratified layer atop the outer core, is not compatible with the observed magnetic field during the CHAMP era. However, allowing just a small amount of poloidal flow leads to a model fitting the observations satisfactorily. As this poloidal flow component is large scale, within a predominantly toroidal, essentially tangentially geostrophic flow, it is compatible with a stably stratified upper outer core. Further, our assumption of little or no diffusive SV may not hold, and a small amount of SV generated locally by diffusion might lead to a large-scale pure toroidal flow providing an acceptable fit to the data.Key words: Magnetic field; Rapid time variations; Satellite magnetics.
I N T RO D U C T I O NMagnetic data are one of the rare sources of information about the motion of the iron-rich liquid forming the outer core of the Earth. It is generally accepted that the Earth's magnetic field is generated mainly in the outer core by convective flows associated with heat and light element release due to the slow freezing of the Earth's inner core. A better understanding of the evolution of the Earth's deep interior is therefore closely linked to our ability to describe this outer core flow. The magnetic field and core flow are related through the induction equation, derived directly from Maxwell's equations.Most approaches begin by deriving magnetic field models from measurements at the Earth's surface and satellite altitude. These models are then used to deduce the flow in the core, even if the modelling step somehow filters out part of the information available in the data. Several difficulties limit further our ability to describe the core flow.First, the magnetic field is measured at the Earth's surface and, after neglecting mantle electrical conductivity to allow the field to be downward continued to the core-mantle boundary (CMB), only the radial component of the poloidal part of the magnetic field is continuous across the conductivity jump there. This component can reasonably be estimated at the top of the free stream, just under the liquid viscous boundary layer (Roberts & Scott 1965;Jault & Le Mouël 1991). However, it is available only for the longest wavelengths, because the field generated...