Disruption in climatic rhythm and anomalous cooling during large decreases in geomagnetic field intensity

The Earth's climate is regulated by many factors. Especially, the orbital elements have a large influence on climate. Are there any factors which impact this strong regulation force? The galactic cosmic ray (CR) can be a candidate for such factors. The correlation between CR flux and global cloud cover suggests that the geomagnetic field affects the Earth's climate. CR is strongly modulated by the geomagnetic field. During the geomagnetic polarity reversal, the decrease in field intensity causes an increase in CR flux which would raise cloud cover. In order to examine this effect in the geological past, we examined climate and sea-level changes focusing on marine oxygen isotope stages (MIS) 31 to 17. The climate changes well accord with eustatic sea-level variations dominated by the Earth's orbital elements. However, in MIS 31 and 19, the thermal maximum was clearly lagged behind the sea-level highstand, and instead anomalous cooling occurred. These interglacial periods have the Lower Jaramillo and Matuyama-Brunhes geomagnetic polarity reversals, respectively. Comparing the climate and relative paleointensity variations for the interglacials, the cooling event coincides with the paleointensity minimum associated with the geomagnetic reversal. The coincidence suggests that the geomagnetic field decrease may have caused the disruption of the orbitally forced Earth's climate rhythm.