title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Earth's magnetic field deflects most of the solar wind, whose charged particles would otherwise strip away the ozone layer that protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. One stripping mechanism is for gas to be caught in bubbles of magnetic field, which are ripped off by solar winds. Calculations of the loss of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere of Mars, resulting from scavenging of ions by the solar wind, indicate that the dissipation of the magnetic field of Mars caused a near total loss of its atmosphere.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The study of the past magnetic field of the Earth is known as paleomagnetism. The polarity of the Earth's magnetic field is recorded in igneous rocks, and reversals of the field are thus detectable as "stripes" centered on mid-ocean ridges where the sea floor is spreading, while the stability of the geomagnetic poles between reversals has allowed paleomagnetism to track the past motion of continents. Reversals also provide the basis for magnetostratigraphy, a way of dating rocks and sediments. The field also magnetizes the crust, and magnetic anomalies can be used to search for deposits of metal ores.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Humans have used compasses for direction finding since the 11th century A.D. and for navigation since the 12th century. Although the magnetic declination does shift with time, this wandering is slow enough that a simple compass can remain useful for navigation. Using magnetoreception, various other organisms, ranging from some types of bacteria to pigeons, use the Earth's magnetic field for orientation and navigation.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: At any location, the Earth's magnetic field can be represented by a three-dimensional vector. A typical procedure for measuring its direction is to use a compass to determine the direction of magnetic North. Its angle relative to true North is the "declination" () or "variation". Facing magnetic North, the angle the field makes with the horizontal is the "inclination" () or "magnetic dip". The "intensity" () of the field is proportional to the force it exerts on a magnet. Another common representation is in (North), (East) and (Down) coordinates.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The intensity of the field is often measured in gauss (G), but is generally reported in microteslas (μT), with 1 G = 100 μT. A nanotesla is also referred to as a gamma (γ). The Earth's field ranges between approximately . By comparison, a strong refrigerator magnet has a field of about .


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: A map of intensity contours is called an "isodynamic chart". As the World Magnetic Model shows, the intensity tends to decrease from the poles to the equator. A minimum intensity occurs in the South Atlantic Anomaly over South America while there are maxima over northern Canada, Siberia, and the coast of Antarctica south of Australia.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The intensity of the magnetic field is subject to change over time. A 2021 paleomagnetic study from the University of Liverpool contributed to a growing body of evidence that the Earth's magnetic field cycles with intensity every 200 million years. The lead author stated that "Our findings, when considered alongside the existing datasets, support the existence of an approximately 200-million-year-long cycle in the strength of the Earth's magnetic field related to deep Earth processes."


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The inclination is given by an angle that can assume values between -90° (up) to 90° (down). In the northern hemisphere, the field points downwards. It is straight down at the North Magnetic Pole and rotates upwards as the latitude decreases until it is horizontal (0°) at the magnetic equator. It continues to rotate upwards until it is straight up at the South Magnetic Pole. Inclination can be measured with a dip circle.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Declination is positive for an eastward deviation of the field relative to true north. It can be estimated by comparing the magnetic north–south heading on a compass with the direction of a celestial pole. Maps typically include information on the declination as an angle or a small diagram showing the relationship between magnetic north and true north. Information on declination for a region can be represented by a chart with isogonic lines (contour lines with each line representing a fixed declination).


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Near the surface of the Earth, its magnetic field can be closely approximated by the field of a magnetic dipole positioned at the center of the Earth and tilted at an angle of about 11° with respect to the rotational axis of the Earth. The dipole is roughly equivalent to a powerful bar magnet, with its south pole pointing towards the geomagnetic North Pole. This may seem surprising, but the north pole of a magnet is so defined because, if allowed to rotate freely, it points roughly northward (in the geographic sense). Since the north pole of a magnet attracts the south poles of other magnets and repels the north poles, it must be attracted to the south pole of Earth's magnet. The dipolar field accounts for 80–90% of the field in most locations.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Historically, the north and south poles of a magnet were first defined by the Earth's magnetic field, not vice versa, since one of the first uses for a magnet was as a compass needle. A magnet's North pole is defined as the pole that is attracted by the Earth's North Magnetic Pole when the magnet is suspended so it can turn freely. Since opposite poles attract, the North Magnetic Pole of the Earth is really the south pole of its magnetic field (the place where the field is directed downward into the Earth).


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The positions of the magnetic poles can be defined in at least two ways: locally or globally. The local definition is the point where the magnetic field is vertical. This can be determined by measuring the inclination. The inclination of the Earth's field is 90° (downwards) at the North Magnetic Pole and -90° (upwards) at the South Magnetic Pole. The two poles wander independently of each other and are not directly opposite each other on the globe. Movements of up to per year have been observed for the North Magnetic Pole. Over the last 180 years, the North Magnetic Pole has been migrating northwestward, from Cape Adelaide in the Boothia Peninsula in 1831 to from Resolute Bay in 2001. The "magnetic equator" is the line where the inclination is zero (the magnetic field is horizontal).


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The global definition of the Earth's field is based on a mathematical model. If a line is drawn through the center of the Earth, parallel to the moment of the best-fitting magnetic dipole, the two positions where it intersects the Earth's surface are called the North and South geomagnetic poles. If the Earth's magnetic field were perfectly dipolar, the geomagnetic poles and magnetic dip poles would coincide and compasses would point towards them. However, the Earth's field has a significant non-dipolar contribution, so the poles do not coincide and compasses do not generally point at either.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Earth's magnetic field, predominantly dipolar at its surface, is distorted further out by the solar wind. This is a stream of charged particles leaving the Sun's corona and accelerating to a speed of 200 to 1000 kilometres per second. They carry with them a magnetic field, the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF).


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The solar wind exerts a pressure, and if it could reach Earth's atmosphere it would erode it. However, it is kept away by the pressure of the Earth's magnetic field. The magnetopause, the area where the pressures balance, is the boundary of the magnetosphere. Despite its name, the magnetosphere is asymmetric, with the sunward side being about 10 Earth radii out but the other side stretching out in a magnetotail that extends beyond 200 Earth radii.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Inside the magnetosphere is the plasmasphere, a donut-shaped region containing low-energy charged particles, or plasma. This region begins at a height of 60 km, extends up to 3 or 4 Earth radii, and includes the ionosphere. This region rotates with the Earth. There are also two concentric tire-shaped regions, called the Van Allen radiation belts, with high-energy ions (energies from 0.1 to 10 MeV). The inner belt is 1–2 Earth radii out while the outer belt is at 4–7 Earth radii. The plasmasphere and Van Allen belts have partial overlap, with the extent of overlap varying greatly with solar activity.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: As well as deflecting the solar wind, the Earth's magnetic field deflects cosmic rays, high-energy charged particles that are mostly from outside the Solar System. Many cosmic rays are kept out of the Solar System by the Sun's magnetosphere, or heliosphere. By contrast, astronauts on the Moon risk exposure to radiation. Anyone who had been on the Moon's surface during a particularly violent solar eruption in 2005 would have received a lethal dose.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Some of the charged particles do get into the magnetosphere. These spiral around field lines, bouncing back and forth between the poles several times per second. In addition, positive ions slowly drift westward and negative ions drift eastward, giving rise to a ring current. This current reduces the magnetic field at the Earth's surface. Particles that penetrate the ionosphere and collide with the atoms there give rise to the lights of the aurorae and also emit X-rays.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The varying conditions in the magnetosphere, known as space weather, are largely driven by solar activity. If the solar wind is weak, the magnetosphere expands; while if it is strong, it compresses the magnetosphere and more of it gets in. Periods of particularly intense activity, called geomagnetic storms, can occur when a coronal mass ejection erupts above the Sun and sends a shock wave through the Solar System. Such a wave can take just two days to reach the Earth. Geomagnetic storms can cause a lot of disruption; the "Halloween" storm of 2003 damaged more than a third of NASA's satellites. The largest documented storm, the Carrington Event, occurred in 1859. It induced currents strong enough to disrupt telegraph lines, and aurorae were reported as far south as Hawaii.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The geomagnetic field changes on time scales from milliseconds to millions of years. Shorter time scales mostly arise from currents in the ionosphere (ionospheric dynamo region) and magnetosphere, and some changes can be traced to geomagnetic storms or daily variations in currents. Changes over time scales of a year or more mostly reflect changes in the Earth's interior, particularly the iron-rich core.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Frequently, the Earth's magnetosphere is hit by solar flares causing geomagnetic storms, provoking displays of aurorae. The short-term instability of the magnetic field is measured with the K-index.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Data from THEMIS show that the magnetic field, which interacts with the solar wind, is reduced when the magnetic orientation is aligned between Sun and Earth – opposite to the previous hypothesis. During forthcoming solar storms, this could result in blackouts and disruptions in artificial satellites.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Changes in Earth's magnetic field on a time scale of a year or more are referred to as "secular variation". Over hundreds of years, magnetic declination is observed to vary over tens of degrees. The animation shows how global declinations have changed over the last few centuries.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The direction and intensity of the dipole change over time. Over the last two centuries the dipole strength has been decreasing at a rate of about 6.3% per century. At this rate of decrease, the field would be negligible in about 1600 years. However, this strength is about average for the last 7 thousand years, and the current rate of change is not unusual.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: A prominent feature in the non-dipolar part of the secular variation is a "westward drift" at a rate of about 0.2° per year. This drift is not the same everywhere and has varied over time. The globally averaged drift has been westward since about 1400 AD but eastward between about 1000 AD and 1400 AD.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Changes that predate magnetic observatories are recorded in archaeological and geological materials. Such changes are referred to as "paleomagnetic secular variation" or "paleosecular variation (PSV)". The records typically include long periods of small change with occasional large changes reflecting geomagnetic excursions and reversals.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: In July 2020 scientists report that analysis of simulations and a recent observational field model show that maximum rates of directional change of Earth's magnetic field reached ~10° per year – almost 100 times faster than current changes and 10 times faster than previously thought.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Studies of lava flows on Steens Mountain, Oregon, indicate that the magnetic field could have shifted at a rate of up to 6° per day at some time in Earth's history, which significantly challenges the popular understanding of how the Earth's magnetic field works. This finding was later attributed to unusual rock magnetic properties of the lava flow under study, not rapid field change, by one of the original authors of the 1995 study.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Although generally Earth's field is approximately dipolar, with an axis that is nearly aligned with the rotational axis, occasionally the North and South geomagnetic poles trade places. Evidence for these "geomagnetic reversals" can be found in basalts, sediment cores taken from the ocean floors, and seafloor magnetic anomalies. Reversals occur nearly randomly in time, with intervals between reversals ranging from less than 0.1 million years to as much as 50 million years. The most recent geomagnetic reversal, called the Brunhes–Matuyama reversal, occurred about 780,000 years ago. A related phenomenon, a geomagnetic "excursion", takes the dipole axis across the equator and then back to the original polarity. The Laschamp event is an example of an excursion, occurring during the last ice age (41,000 years ago).


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The past magnetic field is recorded mostly by strongly magnetic minerals, particularly iron oxides such as magnetite, that can carry a permanent magnetic moment. This remanent magnetization, or "remanence", can be acquired in more than one way. In lava flows, the direction of the field is "frozen" in small minerals as they cool, giving rise to a thermoremanent magnetization. In sediments, the orientation of magnetic particles acquires a slight bias towards the magnetic field as they are deposited on an ocean floor or lake bottom. This is called "detrital remanent magnetization".


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Thermoremanent magnetization is the main source of the magnetic anomalies around mid-ocean ridges. As the seafloor spreads, magma wells up from the mantle, cools to form new basaltic crust on both sides of the ridge, and is carried away from it by seafloor spreading. As it cools, it records the direction of the Earth's field. When the Earth's field reverses, new basalt records the reversed direction. The result is a series of stripes that are symmetric about the ridge. A ship towing a magnetometer on the surface of the ocean can detect these stripes and infer the age of the ocean floor below. This provides information on the rate at which seafloor has spread in the past.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Radiometric dating of lava flows has been used to establish a "geomagnetic polarity time scale", part of which is shown in the image. This forms the basis of magnetostratigraphy, a geophysical correlation technique that can be used to date both sedimentary and volcanic sequences as well as the seafloor magnetic anomalies.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Paleomagnetic studies of Paleoarchean lava in Australia and conglomerate in South Africa have concluded that the magnetic field has been present since at least about .


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Starting in the late 1800s and throughout the 1900s and later, the overall geomagnetic field has become weaker; the present strong deterioration corresponds to a 10–15% decline and has accelerated since 2000; geomagnetic intensity has declined almost continuously from a maximum 35% above the modern value, from circa year 1 AD. The rate of decrease and the current strength are within the normal range of variation, as shown by the record of past magnetic fields recorded in rocks.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The nature of Earth's magnetic field is one of heteroscedastic (seemingly random) fluctuation. An instantaneous measurement of it, or several measurements of it across the span of decades or centuries, are not sufficient to extrapolate an overall trend in the field strength. It has gone up and down in the past for unknown reasons. Also, noting the local intensity of the dipole field (or its fluctuation) is insufficient to characterize Earth's magnetic field as a whole, as it is not strictly a dipole field. The dipole component of Earth's field can diminish even while the total magnetic field remains the same or increases.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The Earth's magnetic north pole is drifting from northern Canada towards Siberia with a presently accelerating rate— per year at the beginning of the 1900s, up to per year in 2003, and since then has only accelerated.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The Earth's magnetic field is believed to be generated by electric currents in the conductive iron alloys of its core, created by convection currents due to heat escaping from the core.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The Earth and most of the planets in the Solar System, as well as the Sun and other stars, all generate magnetic fields through the motion of electrically conducting fluids. The Earth's field originates in its core. This is a region of iron alloys extending to about 3400 km (the radius of the Earth is 6370 km). It is divided into a solid inner core, with a radius of 1220 km, and a liquid outer core. The motion of the liquid in the outer core is driven by heat flow from the inner core, which is about , to the core-mantle boundary, which is about . The heat is generated by potential energy released by heavier materials sinking toward the core (planetary differentiation, the iron catastrophe) as well as decay of radioactive elements in the interior. The pattern of flow is organized by the rotation of the Earth and the presence of the solid inner core.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The mechanism by which the Earth generates a magnetic field is known as a dynamo. The magnetic field is generated by a feedback loop: current loops generate magnetic fields (Ampère's circuital law); a changing magnetic field generates an electric field (Faraday's law); and the electric and magnetic fields exert a force on the charges that are flowing in currents (the Lorentz force). These effects can be combined in a partial differential equation for the magnetic field called the "magnetic induction equation",


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: where is the velocity of the fluid; is the magnetic B-field; and is the magnetic diffusivity, which is inversely proportional to the product of the electrical conductivity and the permeability . The term is the time derivative of the field; is the Laplace operator and is the curl operator.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The first term on the right hand side of the induction equation is a diffusion term. In a stationary fluid, the magnetic field declines and any concentrations of field spread out. If the Earth's dynamo shut off, the dipole part would disappear in a few tens of thousands of years.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: In a perfect conductor (formula_2), there would be no diffusion. By Lenz's law, any change in the magnetic field would be immediately opposed by currents, so the flux through a given volume of fluid could not change. As the fluid moved, the magnetic field would go with it. The theorem describing this effect is called the "frozen-in-field theorem". Even in a fluid with a finite conductivity, new field is generated by stretching field lines as the fluid moves in ways that deform it. This process could go on generating new field indefinitely, were it not that as the magnetic field increases in strength, it resists fluid motion.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The motion of the fluid is sustained by convection, motion driven by buoyancy. The temperature increases towards the center of the Earth, and the higher temperature of the fluid lower down makes it buoyant. This buoyancy is enhanced by chemical separation: As the core cools, some of the molten iron solidifies and is plated to the inner core. In the process, lighter elements are left behind in the fluid, making it lighter. This is called "compositional convection". A Coriolis effect, caused by the overall planetary rotation, tends to organize the flow into rolls aligned along the north–south polar axis.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: A dynamo can amplify a magnetic field, but it needs a "seed" field to get it started. For the Earth, this could have been an external magnetic field. Early in its history the Sun went through a T-Tauri phase in which the solar wind would have had a magnetic field orders of magnitude larger than the present solar wind. However, much of the field may have been screened out by the Earth's mantle. An alternative source is currents in the core-mantle boundary driven by chemical reactions or variations in thermal or electric conductivity. Such effects may still provide a small bias that are part of the boundary conditions for the geodynamo.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The average magnetic field in the Earth's outer core was calculated to be 25 gauss, 50 times stronger than the field at the surface.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Simulating the geodynamo by computer requires numerically solving a set of nonlinear partial differential equations for the magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) of the Earth's interior. Simulation of the MHD equations is performed on a 3D grid of points and the fineness of the grid, which in part determines the realism of the solutions, is limited mainly by computer power. For decades, theorists were confined to creating "kinematic dynamo" computer models in which the fluid motion is chosen in advance and the effect on the magnetic field calculated. Kinematic dynamo theory was mainly a matter of trying different flow geometries and testing whether such geometries could sustain a dynamo.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The first "self-consistent" dynamo models, ones that determine both the fluid motions and the magnetic field, were developed by two groups in 1995, one in Japan and one in the United States. The latter received attention because it successfully reproduced some of the characteristics of the Earth's field, including geomagnetic reversals.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The oceans contribute to Earth's magnetic field. Seawater is an electrical conductor, and therefore interacts with the magnetic field. As the tides cycle around the ocean basins, the ocean water essentially tries to pull the geomagnetic field lines along. Because the salty water is slightly conductive, the interaction is relatively weak: the strongest component is from the regular lunar tide that happens about twice per day (M2). Other contributions come from ocean swell, eddies, and even tsunamis.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The strength of the interaction depends also on the temperature of the ocean water. The entire heat stored in the ocean can now be inferred from observations of the Earth's magnetic field.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Electric currents induced in the ionosphere generate magnetic fields (ionospheric dynamo region). Such a field is always generated near where the atmosphere is closest to the Sun, causing daily alterations that can deflect surface magnetic fields by as much as 1°. Typical daily variations of field strength are about 25 nT (one part in 2000), with variations over a few seconds of typically around 1 nT (one part in 50,000).


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The Earth's magnetic field strength was measured by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1832 and has been repeatedly measured since then, showing a relative decay of about 10% over the last 150 years. The Magsat satellite and later satellites have used 3-axis vector magnetometers to probe the 3-D structure of the Earth's magnetic field. The later Ørsted satellite allowed a comparison indicating a dynamic geodynamo in action that appears to be giving rise to an alternate pole under the Atlantic Ocean west of South Africa.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Governments sometimes operate units that specialize in measurement of the Earth's magnetic field. These are geomagnetic observatories, typically part of a national Geological survey, for example, the British Geological Survey's Eskdalemuir Observatory. Such observatories can measure and forecast magnetic conditions such as magnetic storms that sometimes affect communications, electric power, and other human activities.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The International Real-time Magnetic Observatory Network, with over 100 interlinked geomagnetic observatories around the world, has been recording the Earth's magnetic field since 1991.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The military determines local geomagnetic field characteristics, in order to detect "anomalies" in the natural background that might be caused by a significant metallic object such as a submerged submarine. Typically, these magnetic anomaly detectors are flown in aircraft like the UK's Nimrod or towed as an instrument or an array of instruments from surface ships.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Commercially, geophysical prospecting companies also use magnetic detectors to identify naturally occurring anomalies from ore bodies, such as the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Magnetometers detect minute deviations in the Earth's magnetic field caused by iron artifacts, kilns, some types of stone structures, and even ditches and middens in archaeological geophysics. Using magnetic instruments adapted from airborne magnetic anomaly detectors developed during World War II to detect submarines, the magnetic variations across the ocean floor have been mapped. Basalt — the iron-rich, volcanic rock making up the ocean floor — contains a strongly magnetic mineral (magnetite) and can locally distort compass readings. The distortion was recognized by Icelandic mariners as early as the late 18th century. More important, because the presence of magnetite gives the basalt measurable magnetic properties, these magnetic variations have provided another means to study the deep ocean floor. When newly formed rock cools, such magnetic materials record the Earth's magnetic field.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Each measurement of the magnetic field is at a particular place and time. If an accurate estimate of the field at some other place and time is needed, the measurements must be converted to a model and the model used to make predictions.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The most common way of analyzing the global variations in the Earth's magnetic field is to fit the measurements to a set of spherical harmonics. This was first done by Carl Friedrich Gauss. Spherical harmonics are functions that oscillate over the surface of a sphere. They are the product of two functions, one that depends on latitude and one on longitude. The function of longitude is zero along zero or more great circles passing through the North and South Poles; the number of such "nodal lines" is the absolute value of the "order" . The function of latitude is zero along zero or more latitude circles; this plus the order is equal to the "degree" ℓ. Each harmonic is equivalent to a particular arrangement of magnetic charges at the center of the Earth. A "monopole" is an isolated magnetic charge, which has never been observed. A "dipole" is equivalent to two opposing charges brought close together and a "quadrupole" to two dipoles brought together. A quadrupole field is shown in the lower figure on the right.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Spherical harmonics can represent any scalar field (function of position) that satisfies certain properties. A magnetic field is a vector field, but if it is expressed in Cartesian components , each component is the derivative of the same scalar function called the "magnetic potential". Analyses of the Earth's magnetic field use a modified version of the usual spherical harmonics that differ by a multiplicative factor. A least-squares fit to the magnetic field measurements gives the Earth's field as the sum of spherical harmonics, each multiplied by the best-fitting "Gauss coefficient" or .


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The lowest-degree Gauss coefficient, , gives the contribution of an isolated magnetic charge, so it is zero. The next three coefficients – , , and – determine the direction and magnitude of the dipole contribution. The best fitting dipole is tilted at an angle of about 10° with respect to the rotational axis, as described earlier.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Spherical harmonic analysis can be used to distinguish internal from external sources if measurements are available at more than one height (for example, ground observatories and satellites). In that case, each term with coefficient or can be split into two terms: one that decreases with radius as and one that "increases" with radius as . The increasing terms fit the external sources (currents in the ionosphere and magnetosphere). However, averaged over a few years the external contributions average to zero.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The remaining terms predict that the potential of a dipole source () drops off as . The magnetic field, being a derivative of the potential, drops off as . Quadrupole terms drop off as , and higher order terms drop off increasingly rapidly with the radius. The radius of the outer core is about half of the radius of the Earth. If the field at the core-mantle boundary is fit to spherical harmonics, the dipole part is smaller by a factor of about 8 at the surface, the quadrupole part by a factor of 16, and so on. Thus, only the components with large wavelengths can be noticeable at the surface. From a variety of arguments, it is usually assumed that only terms up to degree or less have their origin in the core. These have wavelengths of about or less. Smaller features are attributed to crustal anomalies.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy maintains a standard global field model called the International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF). It is updated every five years. The 11th-generation model, IGRF11, was developed using data from satellites (Ørsted, CHAMP and SAC-C) and a world network of geomagnetic observatories. The spherical harmonic expansion was truncated at degree 10, with 120 coefficients, until 2000. Subsequent models are truncated at degree 13 (195 coefficients).


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Another global field model, called the World Magnetic Model, is produced jointly by the United States National Centers for Environmental Information (formerly the National Geophysical Data Center) and the British Geological Survey. This model truncates at degree 12 (168 coefficients) with an approximate spatial resolution of 3,000 kilometers. It is the model used by the United States Department of Defense, the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the International Hydrographic Organization as well as in many civilian navigation systems.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: The above models only take into account the "main field" at the core-mantle boundary. Although generally good enough for navigation, higher-accuracy use cases require smaller-scale magnetic anomalies and other variations to be considered. Some examples are (see geomag.us ref for more):


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: For historical data about the main field, the IGRF may be used back to year 1900. A specialized GUFM1 model estimates back to year 1590 using ship's logs. Paleomagnetic research has produced models dating back to 10,000 BCE.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Animals, including birds and turtles, can detect the Earth's magnetic field, and use the field to navigate during migration. Some researchers have found that cows and wild deer tend to align their bodies north–south while relaxing, but not when the animals are under high-voltage power lines, suggesting that magnetism is responsible. Other researchers reported in 2011 that they could not replicate those findings using different Google Earth images.


title: Earth's magnetic field

text: Very weak electromagnetic fields disrupt the magnetic compass used by European robins and other songbirds, which use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate. Neither power lines nor cellphone signals are to blame for the electromagnetic field effect on the birds; instead, the culprits have frequencies between 2 kHz and 5 MHz. These include AM radio signals and ordinary electronic equipment that might be found in businesses or private homes.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: The Turkish Armed Forces (TAF; , TSK) are the military forces of the Republic of Turkey. Turkish Armed Forces consist of the General Staff, the Land Forces, the Naval Forces and the Air Forces. The current Chief of the General Staff is General Yaşar Güler. The Chief of the General Staff is the Commander of the Armed Forces. In wartime, the Chief of the General Staff acts as the Commander-in-Chief on behalf of the President, who represents the Supreme Military Command of the TAF on behalf of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Coordinating the military relations of the TAF with other NATO member states and friendly states is the responsibility of the General Staff.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: The history of the Turkish Armed Forces began with its formation after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish military perceived itself as the guardian of Kemalism, the official state ideology, especially of its emphasis on secularism. After becoming a member of NATO in 1952, Turkey initiated a comprehensive modernization program for its armed forces. The Turkish Army sent 14,936 troops to fight in the Korean War alongside South Korea and NATO. Towards the end of the 1980s, a second restructuring process was initiated. The Turkish Armed Forces participate in an EU Battlegroup under the control of the European Council, the Italian-Romanian-Turkish Battlegroup. The TAF also contributes operational staff to the Eurocorps multinational army corps initiative of the EU and NATO.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: The Turkish Armed Forces is the second largest standing military force in NATO, after the U.S. Armed Forces, and the thirteenth in the world, with an estimated strength of 775,000 military and paramilitary personnel in 2022.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: Turkey is one of five NATO member states which are part of the nuclear sharing policy of the alliance, together with Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. A total of 50 U.S. B61 nuclear bombs are hosted at the Incirlik Air Base, the most of the five countries.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: After the end of World War I, following the occupation of Anatolia by Entente Powers, many Ottoman military personnel escaped from Rumelia to Anatolia in order to join the new Turkish National Movement (TNM). During the War of Independence, on 3 May 1920, Birinci Ferik Mustafa Fevzi Pasha (Çakmak) was appointed the Minister of National Defence, and Mirliva İsmet Pasha (İnönü) was appointed the Minister of the Chief of General Staff of the government of the Grand National Assembly (GNA). But on 3 August 1921, the GNA fired İsmet Pasha from the post of Minister of National Defence because of his failure at the Battle of Afyonkarahisar–Eskişehir and on 5 August, just before the Battle of Sakarya, appointed the chairman of the GNA Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) as commander-in-chief of the Army of the GNA. The TNM won the War of Independence after İzmir was retrieved in 1922 as a result of Greco-Turkish Wars (1919–1922).


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: There were several rebellions southeastern Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s, the most important of which were the 1925 Sheikh Said rebellion and the 1937 Dersim rebellion. All were suppressed by the TAF, sometimes involving large-scale mobilisations of up to 50,000 troops.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: Turkey remained neutral until the final stages of World War II. In the initial stage of World War II, Turkey signed a treaty of mutual assistance with Great Britain and France. But after the fall of France, the Turkish government tried to maintain an equal distance with both the Allies and the Axis. Following Nazi Germany's occupation of the Balkans, upon which the Axis-controlled territory in Thrace and the eastern islands of the Aegean Sea bordered Turkey, the Turkish government signed a Treaty of Friendship and Non-Aggression with Germany on 18 June 1941.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Turkish government sent a military delegation of observers under Lieutenant General Ali Fuat Erden to Germany and the Eastern Front. Following the German retreat from the Caucasus, the Turkish government then moved closer to the Allies and Winston Churchill secretly met with İsmet İnönü at the Adana Conference in Yenice Train Station in southern Turkey on 30 January 1943, with the intent of persuading Turkey to join the war on the side of the Allies. A few days before the start of Operation Zitadelle in July 1943, the Turkish government sent a military delegation under General Cemil Cahit Toydemir to Russia and observed the exercises of the 503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion and its equipment. But after the failure of Operation Zitadelle, the Turkish government participated in the Second Cairo Conference in December 1943, where Franklin D. Roosevelt, Churchill and İnönü reached an agreement on issues regarding Turkey's possible contribution to the Allies. On 23 February 1945, Turkey joined the Allies by declaring war against Germany and Japan, after it was announced at the Yalta Conference that only the states which were formally at war with Germany and Japan by 1 March 1945 would be admitted to the United Nations.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: Turkey participated in the Korean War as a member state of the United Nations and sent the Turkish Brigade, which suffered 731 losses in combat, to South Korea. On 18 February 1952, Turkey became a member of NATO. The South Korean government donated a war memorial for the Turkish soldiers who fought and died in Korea. The Korean pagoda is in Ankara and it was donated in 1973 for the 50th anniversary of the Turkish Republic.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: On 20 July 1974, the TAF launched an amphibious and airborne assault operation on Cyprus, in response to the 1974 Cypriot coup d'état which had been staged by EOKA-B and the Cypriot National Guard against president Makarios III with the intention of annexing the island to Greece; but the military intervention ended up with Turkey occupying a considerable area on the northern part of Cyprus and helping to establish a local government of Turkish Cypriots there, which has thus far been recognized only by Turkey. The intervention came after more than a decade of intercommunal violence (1963–1974) between the island's Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, resulting from the constitutional breakdown of 1963. Turkey invoked its role as a guarantor under the Treaty of Guarantee in justification for the military intervention. Turkish forces landed on the island in two waves, invading and occupying 37% of the island's territory in the northeast for the Turkish Cypriots, who had been isolated in small enclaves across the island prior to the military intervention.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: In the aftermath, the Turkish Cypriots declared a separate political entity in the form of the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus in 1975; and in 1983 made a unilateral declaration of independence as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is recognized only by Turkey to this day. The United Nations continues to recognize the sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus according to the terms of its independence in 1960. The conflict continues to overshadow Turkish relations with Greece and with the European Union. In 2004, during the referendum for the Annan Plan for Cyprus (a United Nations proposal to resolve the Cyprus dispute) 76% of the Greek Cypriots rejected the proposal, while 65% of the Turkish Cypriots accepted it.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: The TAF are in a protracted campaign against the PKK (recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and NATO) which has involved frequent forays into neighbouring Iraq and Syria. Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK was arrested in 1999 in Nairobi and taken to Turkey. In 2015, the PKK cancelled their 2013 ceasefire after tension due to various events.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: Turkey contributed troops in several NATO-led peace forces in Bosnia and Kosovo. Currently there are 402 Turkish troops in Kosovo Force.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: After the 2003 Istanbul Bombings were linked to Al-Qaeda, Turkey deployed troops to Afghanistan to fight Taliban forces and Al-Qaeda operatives, with the hopes of dismantling both groups. Turkey's responsibilities include providing security in Kabul (it formerly lead Regional Command Capital), as well as in Wardak Province, where it leads PRT Maidan Shahr. Turkey was once the third largest contingent within the International Security Assistance Force. Turkey's troops are not engaged in combat operations and Ankara has long resisted pressure from Washington to offer more combat troops. According to the Washington Post, in December 2009, after US President Barack Obama announced he would deploy 30,000 more U.S. soldiers, and that Washington wants others to follow suit, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reacted with the message that Turkey would not contribute additional troops to Afghanistan. "Turkey has already done what it can do by boosting its contingent of soldiers there to 1,750 from around 700 without being asked", said Erdoğan, who stressed that Turkey would continue its training of Afghan security forces.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: The TAF have performed "Disaster Relief Operations," as in the 1999 İzmit earthquake in the Marmara Region of Turkey. Apart from contributing to NATO, the Turkish Navy also contributes to the Black Sea Naval Co-operation Task Group, which was created in early 2001 by Turkey, Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia and Ukraine for search and rescue and other humanitarian operations in the Black Sea.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), in 2020 the Turkish Armed Forces had an active strength of around 355,200 active personnel consisting of 260,200 armed forces, 45,000 naval forces, and 50,000 air forces. In addition, it was estimated that there were 378,700 reserve personnel and 156,800 paramilitary personnel (Turkish Gendarmerie and Turkish Coast Guard), giving a combined active and reserve strength of around 890,500 personnel. In 2020, the defence budget amounted to 76.3 billion liras. The Law on the Court of Accounts was supposed to initiate external ex-post audits of armed forces' expenditure and pave the way for audits of extra budgetary resources earmarked for the defence sector, including the Defence Industry Support Fund. However, the Ministry of Defense has not provided the necessary information, so the armed forces expenditure is not being properly checked.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: In 1998, Turkey announced a programme of modernisation worth US$160 billion over a twenty-year period in various projects including tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, submarines, warships and assault rifles. Turkey is a Level 3 contributor to the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) programme. The final goal of Turkey is to produce new-generation indigenous military equipment and to become increasingly self-sufficient in terms of military technologies.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: HAVELSAN of Turkey and Boeing of the United States are in the process of developing a next-generation, high-altitude ballistic missile defence shield. Turkey has chosen the Chinese defense firm CPMIEC to co-produce a $4 billion long-range air and missile system.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: The General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces is the general staff of the Turkish Armed Forces. Chief of the General Staff reports to Minister of National Defence. General staff is responsible for:


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: The Chief of the General Staff is also, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the name of the President, in wartime.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: Also, the General Staff is in command of the Special Forces, which is not aligned to any force command within the TAF. The Special Forces get their orders directly from the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: The Turkish Land Forces, or Turkish Army, can trace its origins in the remnants of Ottoman forces during the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. When Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his colleagues formed the Grand National Assembly (GNA) in Ankara on 23 April 1920, the XV Corps under the command of Kâzım Karabekir was the only corps which had any combat value. On 8 November 1920, the GNA decided to establish a standing army ("Düzenli ordu") instead of irregular troops (the "Kuva-yi Milliye", "Kuva-yi Seyyare", etc.). GNA gorvernment's army won the Turkish War of Independence in 1922.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: The Turkish Naval Forces, or Turkish Navy, constitutes the naval warfare service branch of the Turkish Armed Forces. The Turkish Navy maintains several Marines and Special Operations units. The "Amphibious Marines Brigade" (Amfibi Deniz Piyade Tugayı) based in Foça near İzmir consists of 4,500 men, three amphibious battalions, an MBT battalion, an artillery battalion, a support battalion and other company-sized units. The "Su Altı Taarruz" (S.A.T. – Underwater Attack) is dedicated to missions including the acquisition of military intelligence, amphibious assault, counter-terrorism and VIP protection; while the "Su Altı Savunma" (S.A.S. – Underwater Defense) is dedicated to coastal defense operations (such as clearing mines or unexploded torpedoes) and disabling enemy vessels or weapons with underwater operations; as well as counter-terrorism and VIP protection missions.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: The Turkish Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the Turkish Armed Forces. It is primarily responsible for the protection and sovereignty of Turkish airspace but also provides air-power to the other service branches. Turkey is one of five NATO member states which are part of the nuclear sharing policy of the alliance, together with Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. A total of 90 B61 nuclear bombs are hosted at the Incirlik Air Base, 40 of which are allocated for use by the Turkish Air Force in case of a nuclear conflict, but their use requires the approval of NATO.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: The Air Force took part in the Operation Deliberate Force of 1995 and Operation Allied Force of 1999, and later participated in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina, employing two squadrons (one in the Ghedi fighter wing, and after 2000 one in the Aviano fighter wing.) They returned to Turkey in 2001. In 2006, 4 Turkish F-16 fighter jets were deployed for NATO's Baltic Air Policing operation.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: As of February 2021, Turkey has at least over 60,000+ military personnel stationed outside its territory. The only military base stationed permanently abroad, regardless of the organizations that are members of Turkey, which has been temporarily holding troops several times abroad due to its responsibilities arising from many international political members, particularly NATO membership, is the Cyprus Turkish Peace Force Command. The military bases of the Turkish Armed Forces in Qatar, Syria, Somalia and Bashiqa, among an unknown amount of other bases internationally, are currently active. It was announced in 2017 that Turkey would start working on establishing a research base in Antarctica.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: According to a study conducted in England, Turkey has the largest deployment of international troops after the United States, with an estimated strength of at least 60,000+ military personnel stationed outside of the borders of Turkey. This means that 1 in 6 of the active military troops of Turkey (which is estimated to be 355,200 in 2020) are deployed outside of the borders of the country.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: After the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk prohibited the political activities of officers in active service with the Military Penal Code numbered 1632 and dated 22 May 1930 (""). However, after the coups d'état in 1960, the "" (National Unity Committee) established the Inner Service Act of the Turkish Armed Forces ("") on 4 January 1961 to legitimize their military interventions in politics. In subsequent coups d'état and coup d'état attempts, they showed reasons to justify their political activities especially with the article 35 and 85 of this act.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: The Turkish military perceived itself as the guardian of Kemalist ideology, the official state ideology, especially of the secular aspects of Kemalism. The TAF still maintains an important degree of influence over the decision-making process regarding issues related to Turkish national security, albeit decreased in the past decades, via the National Security Council.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: The military had a record of intervening in politics, removing elected governments four times in the past. Indeed, it assumed power for several periods in the latter half of the 20th century. It executed three coups d'état: in 1960 (27 May coup), in 1971 (12 March coup), and in 1980 (12 September coup). Following the 1960 coup d'état, the military executed the first democratically elected prime minister in Turkey, Adnan Menderes, in 1961. Most recently, it maneuvered the removal of an Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, in 1997 (known as the 28 February memorandum). Contrary to outsider expectations, the Turkish populace was not uniformly averse to coups; many welcomed the ejection of governments they perceived as unconstitutional.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: On 27 April 2007, in advance of the 4 November 2007 presidential election, and in reaction to the politics of Abdullah Gül, who has a past record of involvement in Islamist political movements and banned Islamist parties such as the Welfare Party, the army issued a statement of its interests. It said that the army is a party to "arguments" regarding secularism; that Islamism ran counter to the secular nature of Turkey, and to the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The Army's statement ended with a clear warning that the TAF stood ready to intervene if the secular nature of the Turkish Constitution is compromised, stating that "the Turkish Armed Forces maintain their sound determination to carry out their duties stemming from laws to protect the unchangeable characteristics of the Republic of Turkey. Their loyalty to this determination is absolute."


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: Over a hundred people, including several generals, have been detained or questioned since July 2008 with respect to the so-called organisation Ergenekon, an alleged clandestine, ultra-nationalist organization with ties to members of the country's military and security forces. The group is accused of terrorism in Turkey. These accusing claims are reported, even while the trials are going on, mostly in the counter-secular and Islamist media organs.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: On 22 February 2010 more than 40 officers were arrested and then formally charged with attempting to overthrow the government with respect to the so-called "Sledgehammer" plot. They include four admirals, a general and two colonels, some of them retired, including former commanders of the Turkish navy and air force (three days later, the former commanders of the navy and air force were released). Partially as a result, the Washington Post reported in April 2010 that the military's power had decreased.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: On the eve of the Supreme Military Council of August 2011, the Chief of the General Staff, along with the Army, Navy, and Air Force commanders, requested their retirement, in protest of the mass arrests which they perceived as a deliberate and planned attack against the Kemalist and secular-minded officers of the Turkish Armed Forces by the Islamists in Turkey, who began to control key positions in the Turkish government, judiciary and police. The swift replacement of the force commanders in the Supreme Military Council meeting affirmed the government's control over the appointment of top-level commanders. However, promotions continue to be determined by the General Staff with limited civilian control. The European Commission, in its 2011 regular yearly report on Turkey's progress towards EU accession, stated that "further reforms on the composition and powers of the Supreme Military Council, particularly on the legal basis of promotions, still need to materialise." The service branch commanders continue to report to the Prime Minister instead of the Defence Minister.


title: Turkish Armed Forces

text: In July 2016, a few rogue factions of the Turkish Armed Forces attempted to take over the government, but Erdogan supporters and other loyal military units stopped the coup attempt. Many people died and hundreds were injured. The parliament house and some other buildings in Ankara and Istanbul were damaged. Thousands of military personnel have been arrested and the structure of the armed forces has been overhauled.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: Mirabel Madrigal is a fictional character that appears in Walt Disney Animation Studios' 60th feature film, "Encanto" (2021). Created by directors Byron Howard and Jared Bush, Mirabel is depicted as an imperfect, quirky, emotional, and empathetic 15-year-old girl who is the only member of the Madrigal family who does not receive a magical gift. When their "miracle" begins to fade, Mirabel takes it upon herself to save the magic, learning of her familial troubles.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: From the outset of the character's development, Mirabel was conceived as the only member of her family without a gift. The film's draft plot depicted her desperately searching for a gift, but the character's motivation was adjusted to a desire to be noticed, which was deemed more relatable for the audience. Mirabel's physical appearance is based on that of tourist guide Alejandra Espinosa Uribe; Mirabel's design began with her skirt, whose extensive embroidery represents her personality. American actress Stephanie Beatriz provides Mirabel's voice; Beatriz first auditioned for the role of Luisa but was deemed perfect for Mirabel.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: Her characterization garnered a variety of awards, with critics praising the character as relatable and heartfelt. Beatriz's performance was also lauded as "terrific" and "perfectly cast". Mirabel's relationship with her family has been the subject of discussion among therapists and immigrant groups, who related to the ways in which she deals with generational trauma.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: After finishing "Zootopia" (2016), directors Byron Howard and Jared Bush wanted their next project to be a musical, which became a Latin American musical after Lin-Manuel Miranda joined the project. The developers discussed their common experiences of having large extended families and decided to make a musical film about a large extended family with twelve main characters. Howard and Bush discussed Latin American culture at length with Juan Rendon and Natalie Osma, who had worked with them on the making-of documentary "Imagining Zootopia". Rendon and Osma are from Colombia; they drew upon their personal experiences with Colombian culture in their discussions, which caused Howard, Bush, and Miranda to focus their research on that country. Rendon and Osma became the first of several cultural experts hired by Disney Animation as consultants on the film, forming what Disney called the "Colombian Cultural Trust".


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: The "Encanto" production team had finalized the basic idea of a girl who is the only member of her family without a supernatural gift. When the group began developing the characters, they realized the vulnerability of Mirabel's situation. Co-director and screenwriter Charise Castro Smith said Mirabel's position is "complicated and awkward and just utterly human and relatable thing [in] that [she] feel[s] like [she is] kind of the unspecial one amongst everyone else who's special and perfect and has it all figured out". Mirabel's lack of powers quickly established her as the ideal plot device, as well as a character with whom audiences could sympathize. The reason behind her lack of powers is deliberately not explained in the film. Bush and Howard said that as a magic realism film, "Encanto" is meant to "function just as well as a story" in the absence of magic. As a result, Mirabel saves her family by resolving tensions rather than by using magic. The directors challenged the animators to make Mirabel distinctive from prior Disney female heroes; she had to be both capable and imperfect but not merely clumsy.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: Mirabel's original name was Beatriz, which was changed two years before casting her voice actor Stephanie Beatriz. The character's name originated from the word "Mira", which means "look" in Spanish. According to Bush; "in the early days we always question if we have the right names – 'miracle' etymology and rhyme with Mirabel reinforced it". The character's name is also a Latin word that means "wonderful", which represents her curiosity.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: As "Encanto" story evolved, the writers and story artists considered Mirabel's motives and imperfections. The film's draft plot depicted her desperately searching for a gift, but the crew realized she would have grown past this. Bush stated that her hope to be noticed, rather than an adventure for a magical gift, felt considerably more relatable. The plot and family connections were eventually written around this motive. One version of the film featured Mirabel narrating until the start of the third act, in which Abuela Alma's point of view would be shown; this concept was scrapped because it was regarded as too distracting.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: Beatriz, who describes herself as a "huge Disney fan", "lost [her] mind" when she learned Disney was setting a film in Colombia and that Lin-Manuel Miranda was composing the soundtrack for it. She began emailing her agents and managers, requesting an audition for the film. Beatriz initially auditioned for Luisa, but when they heard her read, the production crew decided she was perfect for Mirabel. According to Smith, Beatriz secured the part because of her personality, humor, and distinctive voice. During her audition for Mirabel, Beatriz sang "You're Welcome" from "Moana" and performed a scene in which Mirabel comforts Antonio before he receives his gift. Beatriz called the audition a "dream come true" and being given the role her top accomplishment.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: The directors wanted to let the actors explore their roles and to feel at ease "messing around and improvising in the moment". Beatriz initially believed Mirabel should sound young, so she voiced her with a high pitch. Howard and Bush, however, insisted on making her sound more mature; they considered she had to take care of herself most of the time because her family is full of "stars". According to Beatriz, Mirabel must manage her own needs, requiring a certain amount of maturity. Beatriz said finding time to breathe while singing was the most challenging part of voicing Mirabel; "You got to literally plan out 'Okay. On this eighth note or whatever I've got to ... ' So that I'm ready for the next big chunk of it." When recording Mirabel's "I Want" song "Waiting on a Miracle", Beatriz was nine months pregnant; she worked with a vocal coach to learn proper breathing techniques and ensure she was properly supporting herself. Much of her voice work was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sometimes, she acted with only Miranda or the directors, but on some occasions, many other crew members would listen to her. As she recorded for Mirabel, Beatriz received many sketches, which she described as "really special" because the character bore a resemblance to herself at the same age. For "What Else Can I Do?", Beatriz watched the sequence's initial animation, which she credited for her finding a way to "weave [her] way through the song using [her] voice".


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: While researching the film in Barichara, Howard and Bush befriended Alejandra Espinosa Uribe, a local tour guide who showed them around the town, later hiring her to consult on the film's historical and cultural authenticity. Espinosa Uribe influenced several aspects of Mirabel's characteristics, including her curly, black hair, large eyeglasses, and gestures. Velasquez and the film's character technical director Xinmin Zhao looked for real-life references across "the whole studio" for Mirabel's hair and were inspired by Castro Smith's curls. The animators took inspiration from Beatriz's characteristics and mannerisms to make Mirabel as distinct as possible. Mirabel's clothes are intended to look handmade. As a unique member of her family, Mirabel lacks a color palette that connects her to Casita, so her outfit incorporates most of her family's colors.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: Because "Encanto" is set in the Andean region, its traditional fashions were an important inspiration for the film's costumes. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, women from the region usually dressed in white tops with needlework, long skirts, and matching petticoats. They would also wear "alpargatas" (traditional Colombian shoes) created from fique. Design work was not linear; Disney artists repeatedly moved between different stages to iteratively improve the character. For example, the modelers sent the production team a work-in-progress model after building a first iteration based on visual development artists' drawings of Mirabel. The artists would make draw-overs to give feedback to the modelers, adding to her anatomy and design. Initial designs depicted Mirabel in an oversized coat, an idea the production crew explored for some time. Earlier versions of Mirabel's body shape were more stylized than later ones. When Abuela Alma's body was revised to a more naturalistic shape, Mirabel's body was also revised in the same way, which meant the shape of Mirabel's neckline more closely resembled human anatomy.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: Mirabel's design began with her skirt, which is inspired by those from the Vélez area as well as traditional Colombian ones in general. The skirt was decorated with embroidery that is intended to look imperfect and handcrafted. Look-development artist Jose Luis "Weecho" Velasquez "virtually stitched all the embroidery by hand" on a computer to build the texture of Mirabel's skirt. Disney artists designed symbols for the skirt to represent each member of her family and her affection for them. These symbols include a candle for Alma, animals for Antonio, flowers for Isabela, a sun for Pepa, and a chameleon for Camilo. According to "Screen Rant", the incorporation of her family's gifts on her skirt displays her Madrigal pride and indicates her character, her lack of resentment and envy of her family, and her active support for them and their gifts. Mirabel's full name, and an image of her own face wearing her glasses, are sewn into the skirt to show she lacks a gift. "Loud" aspects, such as pink tassels, are used to represent Mirabel's desire to be noticed. According to associate production designer Lorelay Bové, Mirabel's skirt is similar to "a 15-year-old girl's scrapbook". Mirabel's shirt has a butterfly pattern that references the Madrigal family. In accordance with the film's theme of significant changes, butterfly designs, including one on the candle, are seen throughout Casita.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: Mirabel is the first Disney female hero to wear glasses. They are a significant part of her appearance. A primary theme of the film, according to Bové, is perspective; Mirabel's glasses are a deliberate choice to highlight that concept. Mirabel embarks on an adventure to see her family anew and other people's true characters; according to Bush: "we gave her glasses on purpose because it was a part of her journey[,] and we wanted it to be baked into her character". She also wears them because part of her name comes from the Spanish word "Mira". The glasses are green as a reference to Bruno, her uncle, who wears green clothing.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: At age five, Mirabel is seemingly denied a gift from her family's miracle. From this point onward, everyone's expectations of her change, and everyone, including Mirabel herself, sees her differently. Ten years later, she is accidentally excluded from a family picture and feels she is not truly a part of the Madrigal family. Because she wishes to have a gift, Mirabel notices Casita cracking and the candle flickering, which Alma, her "abuela", says would never happen. Mirabel warns everyone, but the cracks disappear, and no one believes her. Mirabel hears Alma questioning whether the miracle is dying, and she takes it upon herself to save it.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: Luisa, Mirabel's older sister, suggests Mirabel search her missing uncle Bruno's room for a clue because of a rumor that he had a vision about the magic. Mirabel finds the vision and sees herself surrounded by a cracked Casita, implying she might be the cause of the miracle's dying. Dolores later reveals the secret to everyone. Mirabel finds Bruno hiding inside the house's walls and questions him about his vision; Bruno says he only knows the fate of the Madrigal family will depend on her. When Bruno makes another vision, Mirabel sees a butterfly and herself hugging someone, whom she and Bruno identify as Isabela, her eldest sister. Annoyed due to Isabela's entitled personality, Mirabel insincerely asks her for a hug, which she refuses. Isabela inadvertently reveals that she struggles with the constant pressure to be perfect. Mirabel persuades Isabela to become truer to herself, and they reconcile, partially healing the cracks near the candle. Alma sees them and accuses Mirabel of trying to hurt the family out of spite for lacking a gift. Despondent with this treatment, Mirabel realizes that she and the rest of the family will never be good enough for Alma and that the miracle is dying because of her. The house breaks and collapses as a result of their heated argument. Mirabel tries to save the candle, but it extinguishes in her hands. Distraught and heartbroken, Mirabel runs away.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: Alma finds Mirabel at the river and apologizes for her accusation and high expectations for their family. Mirabel and Alma reconcile, and return to a broken Casita; Mirabel tells her family they are more than their gifts, while Alma apologizes for seeing her family's powers as the miracle instead of their existence. The family, with the townspeople, rebuild Casita. The Madrigals make a doorknob bearing an "M" for Mirabel to place into the front door, causing Casita to be restored, and the family regains their powers. Later, the family takes a group photograph, this time with Mirabel at the center of her family.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: In December 2021, Disney released the Mirabel Singing Doll, which sings "The Family Madrigal" from the film, on shopDisney. A separate doll sold by Jakks Pacific says more than 15 ""Encanto"-inspired" phrases. Funko Pop released a set of vinyl figurines of Madrigal family members, including Mirabel, in January 2022.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: From November 2021, Mirabel started making appearances for meet and greets in the Adventureland areas of Disney parks. At Frontierland's Zocalo Park, she is a meetable character "in a colorful photo location that pays homage to the Madrigal family from Colombia". In April 2022, the Madrigal family and the song "We Don't Talk About Bruno" were incorporated into the "It's a Small World" attraction through numerous projections. As of April 5, 2022, early ideas for the Main Street Electrical Parade's 14 grand finale stories included Mirabel and Antonio.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: Mirabel has been praised by film critics. According to "Screen Daily", Mirabel radiates warmth in caring for her younger relatives and acting as the family's emotional glue. "San Francisco Chronicle" G. Allen Johnson considered her one of Disney's most appealing works, possessing "the greatest superpower" of all. For "Denver Post", John Wenzel stated that Mirabel, as well as "Moana" (2016) and "Raya and the Last Dragon" (2021) titular characters, signified more independent Disney heroines. Kristen Lopez of "IndieWire" found it impossible to find Mirabel unrelatable in a family where one might be perceived as non-standard; "CinemaBlend" Dirk Libbey agreed, calling Mirabel Disney's most relatable character to date. Brian Truitt, writing for "USA Today", singled out her awkwardness, humor, and heart, commenting that these elements made her "quite [an] enjoyable character to watch on a journey of identity and acceptance". "ComingSoon.net" gave particular praise to Mirabel's distinctiveness, charisma, quirkiness, and weirdness.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: Critics have found Beatriz's voice work for the character magnificent, terrific, perfectly cast, spectacular, excellent, spirited, and exceptional. "IGN" said Beatriz "brings just the right amount of charm and sincerity to the non-magical teenager". "Bleeding Cool" critic Kaitlyn Booth thought Mirabel's sadness and frustration were well expressed within her performance.


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: Since its release, "Encanto" has been discussed among therapists. Mirabel has been interpreted as the "[t]he healer trying to keep her family whole". Immigrants stated they identify with her since they are "born into this duality, and ... not seen in one, and ... not seen in the other" after their parents come to another country to escape war and violence. Other clients relate to Mirabel's hopes for acknowledgment from her elders expressed during "Waiting on a Miracle". "Psychology Today" stated that despite attempting to use "positive self-talk" at the start of the film, Mirabel's sense of self-worth and belonging is harmed by her lack of powers. The website interpreted Alma's later understanding that Mirabel's existence is a gift as a message of self-appreciation. On the topic of family dynamics, therapist and YouTuber Steph Anya stated that since her viewpoint is different from her family's, Mirabel is blamed for all the problems that occur, and because she lacks a gift, she can see the Madrigals' suffering and "starts the family's healing journey".


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: According to "USA Today", many Latino millennials wanting to end generational trauma hope to do what Mirabel does: confronting the problem's source and the person who is causing pain. "Polygon" writer José María Luna drew comparisons between the people of Colombia and Mirabel, stating: "We're a country of Mirabels, all struggling to figure out how to fix these evils that seem like our birthright." Marcela Rodriguez-Campo, a Colombian academic, believed that casting Mirabel, a non-white, mestiza heroine, as the primary character was a crucial decision. However, Camilo Garzón expressed concern that when a non-white figure is inspirational, there is a risk that the character may become representative of a whole culture, as was the case with "Moana" and "Coco" (2017).


title: Mirabel Madrigal

text: Mirabel won Best Animated Female at the 2022 Alliance of Women Film Journalists Awards and 2021 Women Film Critics Circle Awards, in addition to the Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature. Stephanie Beatriz has also received several nominations for her voice performance, including the Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement for Voice Acting in a Feature Production.


title: Private network

text: In Internet networking, a private network is a computer network that uses a private address space of IP addresses. These addresses are commonly used for local area networks (LANs) in residential, office, and enterprise environments. Both the IPv4 and the IPv6 specifications define private IP address ranges.


title: Private network

text: Private network addresses are not allocated to any specific organization. Anyone may use these addresses without approval from regional or local Internet registries. Private IP address spaces were originally defined to assist in delaying IPv4 address exhaustion. IP packets originating from or addressed to a private IP address cannot be routed through the public Internet.


title: Private network

text: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has directed the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to reserve the following IPv4 address ranges for private networks:


title: Private network

text: In April 2012, IANA allocated the block "100.64.0.0/10" (100.64.0.0 to 100.127.255.255, netmask 255.192.0.0) for use in carrier-grade NAT scenarios.


title: Private network

text: This address block should not be used on private networks or on the public Internet. The size of the address block (2, approximately 4 million addresses) was selected to be large enough to uniquely number all customer access devices for all of a single operator's points of presence in a large metropolitan area such as Tokyo.


title: Private network

text: The concept of private networks has been extended in the next generation of the Internet Protocol, IPv6, and special address blocks are reserved.


title: Private network

text: The address block is reserved by IANA for Unique Local Addresses (ULA). They are unicast addresses, but contain a 40-bit random number in the routing prefix to prevent collisions when two private networks are interconnected. Despite being inherently "local" in usage, the IPv6 address scope of unique local addresses is global.


title: Private network

text: The first block defined is , designed for /48 routing blocks, in which users can create multiple subnets, as needed.


title: Private network

text: A former standard proposed the use of "site-local" addresses in the block, but because of scalability concerns and poor definition of what constitutes a "site", its use has been deprecated since September 2004.


title: Private network

text: Another type of private networking uses the link-local address range. The validity of link-local addresses is limited to a single link; e.g. to all computers connected to a switch, or to one wireless network. Hosts on different sides of a network bridge are also on the same link, whereas hosts on different sides of a network router are on different links.


title: Private network

text: In IPv4, link-local addresses are codified in RFC 6890 and RFC 3927. Their utility is in zero-configuration networking when Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) services are not available and manual configuration by a network administrator is not desirable. The block was allocated for this purpose. If a host on an IEEE 802 (Ethernet) network cannot obtain a network address via DHCP, an address from to may be assigned pseudorandomly. The standard prescribes that address collisions must be handled gracefully.


title: Private network

text: The implementation of these link-local addresses is mandatory, as various functions of the IPv6 protocol depend on them.


title: Private network

text: A special case of private link-local addresses is the loopback interface. These addresses are private and link-local by definition, since packets never leave the host device.


title: Private network

text: IPv4 reserves the entire class A address block for use as private loopback addresses. IPv6 reserves the single address .


title: Private network

text: Private addresses are commonly used in residential IPv4 networks. Most Internet service providers (ISPs) allocate only a single publicly routable IPv4 address to each residential customer, but many homes have more than one computer, smartphone, or other Internet-connected device. In this situation, a network address translator (NAT/PAT) gateway is usually used to provide Internet connectivity to multiple hosts.


title: Private network

text: Private addresses are also commonly used in corporate networks which, for security reasons, are not connected directly to the Internet. Often a proxy, SOCKS gateway, or similar devices are used to provide restricted Internet access to network-internal users. 24-bit block private addresses are also commonly used in the North Korean Kwangmyong network.


title: Private network

text: In both cases, private addresses are often seen as enhancing network security for the internal network, since use of private addresses internally makes it difficult for an Internet (external) host to initiate a connection to an internal system.


title: Private network

text: It is common for packets originating in private address spaces to be misrouted onto the Internet. Private networks often do not properly configure DNS services for addresses used internally and attempt reverse DNS lookups for these addresses, causing extra traffic to the Internet root nameservers. The AS112 project attempted to mitigate this load by providing special "blackhole" anycast nameservers for private address ranges which only return negative result codes ("not found") for these queries.


title: Private network

text: Organizational edge routers are usually configured to drop ingress IP traffic for these networks, which can occur either by misconfiguration, or from malicious traffic using a spoofed source address. Less commonly, ISP edge routers drop such egress traffic from customers, which reduces the impact to the Internet of such misconfigured or malicious hosts on the customer's network.


title: Private network

text: Since the private IPv4 address space is relatively small, many private IPv4 networks unavoidably use the same address ranges. This can create a problem when merging such networks, as some addresses may be duplicated for multiple devices. In this case, networks or hosts must be renumbered, often a time-consuming task, or a network address translator must be placed between the networks to translate or masquerade one of the address ranges.


title: Private network

text: IPv6 defines unique local addresses in RFC 4193, providing a very large private address space from which each organization can randomly or pseudo-randomly allocate a 40-bit prefix, each of which allows 65536 organizational subnets. With space for about one trillion (10) prefixes, it is unlikely that two network prefixes in use by different organizations are the same, provided each of them was selected randomly, as specified in the standard. When two such private IPv6 networks are connected or merged, the risk of an address conflict is therefore virtually absent.


title: Private network

text: Despite official warnings, historically some organizations have used other parts of the reserved IP addresses for their internal networks.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: Candy Crush Saga is a free-to-play tile-matching video game released by King on April 12, 2012, originally for Facebook; other versions for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 10 followed. It is a variation of their browser game "Candy Crush".


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: In the game, players complete levels by swapping colored pieces of candy on a game board to make a match of three or more of the same color, eliminating those candies from the board and replacing them with new ones, which could potentially create further matches. Matches of four or more candies create unique candies that act as power-ups with larger board-clearing abilities. Boards have various goals that must be completed within a fixed number of moves or a limited amount of time, such as a certain score or collecting a specific number of a type of candy.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: "Candy Crush Saga" is considered one of the first and most successful uses of a freemium model; while the game can be played completely through without spending money, players can buy special actions to help clear more difficult boards, from which King makes its revenues—at its peak, the company was reportedly earning almost $1 million per day. Around 2014, over 93 million people were playing "Candy Crush Saga", while revenue over a three-month period as reported by King was over $493 million. Five years after its release on mobile, the "Candy Crush Saga" series has received over 2.7 billion downloads, and the game has been one of the highest-grossing and most-played mobile apps in that time frame.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: King has since released three related titles, "Candy Crush Soda Saga", "Candy Crush Jelly Saga" and "Candy Crush Friends Saga", and most of the company's other mobile titles follow the same "Saga" freemium format.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: "Candy Crush Saga" is a "match three" game, where the core gameplay is based on swapping two adjacent candies among several on the gameboard to make a row or column of at least three matching-colored candies. On this match, the matched candies are removed from the board, and candies above them fall into the empty spaces, with new candies appearing from the top of the board. This may create a new matched set of candies, which is automatically cleared in the same manner. The player scores points for these matches and gains progressively more points for chain reactions (called cascades). Additionally, creating matches of four or more candies will create a special candy that, when matched, can clear a row, column, or other section of the board.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: The game is split into many levels, which must be completed in sequence. Each level poses a different challenge to the user, such as removing jelly on tiles or clearing candies in a fixed number of moves to bring special ingredients to the bottom of the board. Boards have a number of different configurations and may include special spaces that have their own unique rules, such as spaces covered with jelly that must be cleared by making a match on that space. If the player meets the level's goal, they will be given from one, two, three or sugar stars based on their score and can proceed onto the next level. Otherwise, they will lose one life and must try again. If the player runs out of lives, they have to wait for some period of real-world time while their lives regenerate before attempting the level again. Completed levels can be replayed if desired.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: The game has been expanded with a number of episodes, adding a 15 new levels per episode as well as new gameplay mechanics. Each episode has 15 levels of gameplay. In the game's first major expansion, the game added a separate set of levels in the Dreamworld. While levels had the same goals, the players had to balance matches of candies of two randomly selected colors to avoid disrupting the sleeping Odus the Owl; if they failed, the level had to be repeated. If they collected enough matched candies to fill a meter, the game would automatically activate the Moon Struck power: the board was cleared of all candies of those two colors, and the player gained a few turns of additional matches without needing to balance colors. After this, Odus returned to sleeping and two new colors were randomly selected for the balance. This continued until the player completed the level or ran out of turns as in the main game. Dreamworld levels used a different set of lives from the main game, allowing the player to switch back and forth between these modes. The Dreamworld is no longer accessible.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: The game is primarily monetized through in-app purchases (through either a credit card, iTunes credits or Google Play credits); players begin with five "lives", lost whenever a level is failed. This applies to all of King's games. When they are exhausted, users can either send requests to their Facebook friends for more lives, wait for them to replenish themselves (a life is restored every half-hour), or purchase them. Initially, when a player makes a purchase for new lives, they receive five new lives for a specific dollar amount. In a recent update, when a player makes a purchase for new lives, the player receives gold bars, the quantity depending on how much money they spend. Gold bars can be used for new lives, extra moves, boosters or to unlock a new episode. At certain points, primarily at the start of new "episodes", users must also either purchase or receive a request from at least three friends before they may access the next set of levels. An update meant players waited for only three days to unlock the next episode.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: Boosters, to make the levels easier, can be bought using in-app purchases. While the game includes freemium content, 97.7% of those playing the game do so for free, while only 2.3% pay.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: Throughout the game, the player solves puzzles so Tiffi (short for Toffette) can solve problems plaguing the residents of the Candy Kingdom. These include tutorial guide Mr. Toffee, whose voice was changed from an over-the-top French accent in the original version of the game into a more modest deep male voice; the Easter Bunny; the shop owner Mr. Yeti; Odus the owl from Dreamworld levels; the villainous Bubblegum Troll; and many others.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: In "Candy Crush Jelly Saga", the two main characters that the player plays against are the Jelly Queen and Cupcake Carl.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: Prior to the release of "Candy Crush Saga", most of King's games were browser games offered through their website or partner portals such as Yahoo!. This included "Candy Crush", a straightforward tile-matching game released in 2011 which King's chief creative officer and co-founder Sebastian Knutsson said came after a few hundred other games they had designed for the portal. "Candy Crush"s concept had been based on an early game King made, "Miner Speed", that borrowed gameplay elements from "Bejeweled". "Candy Crush" added new animations for the candies, and expressive paper doll-like characters that helped to make the game one of five most popular ones on the site by 2012. At that point, the game was a basic score attack game. Knutsson said, "the first version was three minutes of great gaming, but that three minutes didn't really evolve." "Candy Crush", as with several of King's other portal games, featured tournament-style gameplay, where players could spend money to enter competitive tourneys for in-game boosts, which served as one of the main forms of revenue for the company in addition to in-game item sale microtransactions and advertisements.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: Around 2009, Facebook began to pull in developers, in particular Zynga, to offer social network games that could be built on its fundamental services; for King, this resulted in a large drop in players that they saw from their game portals within a year. At this point, King started to determine how it could enter the Facebook and the associated mobile game markets, breaking up its web development department to work on Facebook and mobile games in 2010, including bringing several of their existing browser games to those platforms. Most of these existing games were introduced as beta versions to Facebook users, and the company used player counts and feedback to determine which of these titles had the most prospect for moving forward, allowing them to focus more intensive development on those titles while dropping the rest, in the style of a rapid prototyping approach. The Facebook platform allowed them to explore expansion of their existing tournament-style games and the ability to include microtransactions within the game.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: In April 2011, King released its existing portal game "Miner Speed" as its first cross-platform (Facebook and mobile) game to figure out the transition between Facebook and mobile games for this new direction. King's first major success in this area followed with "Bubble Witch Saga", released in October 2011; by January 2012 it has attracted over 10 million players and was one of fastest rising Facebook games at that time. "Bubble Witch Saga" introduced the "saga" approach in contrast to typical tile-matching games, where instead of having the game continue through a fixed amount of time or until the player reached an unplayable state, the game was divided into discrete levels that required the player to complete certain goals within a fixed set of moves, and where the next level could only be reached after completing the previous level. These saga elements allowed for the basics of social gameplay, but did not require the time investment that then-popular titles like Zynga's "FarmVille" required; players could play just for a few minutes each day through the saga model. The success of "Bubble Witch Saga" establishing King as a viable developer in this arena, becoming the second-largest developer by daily player count on the Facebook platform by April 2012, trailing only Zynga.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: "Candy Crush Saga" was selected as King's next Facebook game based on the popularity of the portal version of "Candy Crush". The basic cross-platform framework from "Miner Speed" were used to craft the foundation of "Candy Crush Saga", adding the "saga" elements from "Bubble Witch Saga". Initial ideas to expand "Candy Crush" into "Candy Crush Saga" were proposed by Knutsson, around 2011, including making the saga map visually look like a board game. The game was first released for Facebook in April 2012, at the time featuring only 65 levels. The game quickly gained popularity, gaining more than 4 million players within a few weeks of release.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: King later released mobile versions for iOS and Android that same year, adding a feature that allowed mobile users to synchronize their progress with the Facebook version. Knutsson stated that at that time, with "Candy Crush Saga" as popular as it was on Facebook, they knew that they "had to get it right" in the transition process. King had previously discussed the nature of games that kept their state between a PC and mobile version with Fabrication Games, believing this was a necessary trend in the future of gaming, Both recognized several of the difficulties that would have to be addressed to provide both the progress synchronization and gameplay interface between mouse-driven PC computers and touch-driven mobile devices. King found that one issue with transiting "Bubble Witch Saga" to mobile was that the gameplay elements were too small for mobile devices, and aimed to correct that for "Candy Crush Saga" on mobile. The mobile release delay for "Candy Crush Saga" was in part due to adding the ability to play the mobile version in an offline mode that would still synchronize once the player returned online.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: The mobile version helped to boost the popularity of the game, attributed to the nature of the game being able to be played in a pick-up-and-go manner ideally suited for mobile devices. Tommy Palm, one of the four developers for "Candy Crush Saga", stated that the first weekend numbers after the game's mobile release were over ten times greater than the estimates they expected. By January 2013, "Candy Crush Saga" overtook Zynga's "FarmVille 2" as the top-played game on the Facebook platform.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: King had not planned for "Candy Crush Saga" to be as popular as it was, expecting the game to have only a six-month window after which players would move on to a different game, and thus had committed only minimal resources to its ongoing support at launch. Instead, with the game's popularity still high by the end of 2012, King became more serious about supporting the game for the long term, looking into deeper game mechanics, adding more levels, and other methods to extend the game. Since its release, "Candy Crush Saga" was expanded over the years by adding new episodes, each containing a number of new levels. This enabled King to also introduce new gameplay features alongside other game improvements. New features were first tested on King's own portal to see how players there responded and allowed them to tweak these as needed, then push them into the episodes on the Facebook/mobile version. By September 2016, King released its 2000th level for the game to celebrate the milestone of over 1 trillion "Candy Crush Saga" games having been played. More recently, with the game offered as a free-to-play model, King seeks to provide new content on a weekly or biweekly basis, including time-limited content. Zacconi saw this approach as a means to keep players, who otherwise have not purchased anything, to keep coming back and playing the game.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: According to review aggregator website Metacritic, the game received an average review score of 79/100, indicating generally positive reviews. Ellie Gibson of "Eurogamer" referred to "Candy Crush Saga" as 2013's "Game of the Year".


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: By 2013, "Candy Crush Saga" had been downloaded more than 500 million times across Facebook, iOS, and Android devices. It was considered the most downloaded app from the Apple App Store, and had at least 6.7 million active users on a daily basis; the game had a daily revenue of $633,000 from the United States section of the iOS App Store alone. By 2014, the game had over 245 million active players each month but has since dropped off, with that count falling to around 166 million by 2016. It again rose back to 293 million active monthly players by November 2017.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: Though initially released with advertising to help with revenue, King removed the advertising in 2013 and solely has earned money from the game in the form of in-app purchases. Only a small percentage of the player base has purchased in-game items, up to around 4%, but this has led to millions of dollars in monthly revenue for King. In 2014, "Candy Crush Saga" players spent over $1.33 billion on in-app purchases. This is a decline from the previous year since in the second half of 2013 players spent over $1.04 billion. By 2015, the monthly revenue was estimated at $120 million, but with declining players purchasing in-game items, down to 2% by 2016, that revenue has dropped to just over $53 million per month. Again, by the end of October 2018, the monthly revenue rose to $128 million.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: Five years after its release on mobile, the "Candy Crush Saga" series has received over 2.73 billion downloads. Its revenue for the quarter ending September 2017 was $250 million, having gained significant improvement in year-to-year revenues from 2016. It remains one of the top gross-revenue earnings app for mobile in the four years leading up to 2017. By the end of July 2018, the total revenue earned by this game stood at $3.91 billion.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: "Candy Crush" received particular mention in Hong Kong media, with reports that one in seven Hong Kong citizens plays the game. In December 2013, King entered the Japanese market with a series of television commercials in Japan, and by December 4 it had become the 23rd most downloaded game in Japan on Android devices and number 1 most downloaded from the App Store. It is also the most popular game in the UK of all time.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: 58% of the players are women, while 46% of the players are of Gen X, though more youths and children play it.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: Candy Crush Saga won the People's Choice Awards for Favorite Mobile Game 2016. Other nominees were "Fruit Ninja", "Despicable Me: Minion Rush", "Plants vs. Zombies" and "Temple Run". It was also the winner of 9th International Mobile Gaming Awards for the Best Social Game.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: King filed for applications for trademarks on the word "candy" in January 2013 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which became publicly known in January 2014. News of these pending trademarks raised concerns from other developers, who feared that King would use their trademark to intimidate smaller developers. In response to this criticism, King decided not to pursue the trademark.


title: Candy Crush Saga

text: The mobile game known as "CandySwipe" created in 2010, two years prior to the release of "Candy Crush Saga", had many similarities that independent app developer Albert Ransom and maker of "CandySwipe" picked up on as "Candy Crush Saga" became more successful. Following news of the "candy" trademark, Ransom issued a statement in February 2014, claiming that King intentionally copied elements from his own game including the app icon, the art for the candy pieces, and sound effects like the level-completion "Sweet!". While details were not given, Ransom stated that he had "amicably" resolved the matter with King by April of that year.