Magsat to CHAMP: Magnetic Satellite Explorations of Lithospheric Anomalies over Kursk, Bangui and the Antarctic
We compare crustal magnetic anomaly maps over the Kursk (Russia) and Bangui (Central African Republic) isolated anomalies and the Antarctic derived from the Magsat, \Orsted and CHAMP satellite fields. We wish to demonstrate how progress in satellite magnetic missions has improved the recovery of the crustal magnetic field. The 6-month long Magsat mission of 25 years ago generated two major methods of processing satellite magnetic anomaly data for lithospheric studies. The first was a global perspective using spherical harmonics that emphasize the more regional and global lithospheric fields. However, these fields commonly do not resolve local anomaly features in any detail. Therefore a second procedure involved the use of the individual satellite orbit or track data to recover small-scale anomalies on a regional scale. We present results over prominent magnetic anomalies such as Kursk, Bangui and the large Antarctic continent that demonstrate how the various analysis methods affect the recovery of crustal anomalies. The more recent \Orsted and CHAMP missions are successfully recording data with an improved accuracy and with full spatial and temporal coverage. We show and interpret the total magnetic intensity anomaly maps over these areas from all three satellite magnetometer data sets.