Testing a toroidal magnetic field imaging method at the core-mantle boundary using a numerical dynamo model

I quantitatively test a method of toroidal field imaging at the core-mantle boundary (CMB) using a synthetic magnetic field and core surface flow data from a 3-D self-consistent numerical dynamo model with a thin electrically conducting layer overlying the CMB, like the D'' layer. With complete knowledge of the core flow, the imaged toroidal field well reproduces the magnitude and pattern of the dynamo model toroidal field. However, quality of the imaging depends strongly on latitude. In particular, the amplitude and correlation between the dynamo model and the imaged toroidal fields decline substantially at low latitude. Such degradation in imaging quality is due to inability to account for the radial derivative of the toroidal field, that is, an effect of magnetic diffusion, which is not incorporated in the method.