Statistical analysis of the oceanic magnetic anomaly data

The study of the statistical properties of ocean magnetic anomalies could be very important to obtain new understanding on plate tectonics, especially about the past properties of the lithospheric oceanic plates. Here we analyse in terms of statistical distributions the ocean magnetic anomaly data at the global scale covering the crustal oceanic ages from the present to 180 Ma. Our results show that the marine magnetic anomaly data follow the Laplace statistical distribution. This behaviour is observed at global scale and for any time interval within the last 180 Ma. In addition, the statistical parameters of the Laplace distribution are used to define some properties of the crustal oceanic magnetic field, focusing our investigation on the Cretaceous Normal Superchron. Finally, we also provide a physical explanation of this statistical distribution of marine magnetic anomaly data using a test with synthetic data.