Click here to use the Paleo-calculator tool!

This tool provides an online paleolatitude calculation at a given site based on paleomagnetic data, in addition to the typical apparent polar wander path approach (e.g., van Hinsbergen et al., 2015).

Accurate paleolatitudinal reconstruction is crucial for paleoclimate studies and backtesting climate models. The use of paleomagnetic data and the precise geologic age of the study location would be the optimum reconstruction method. However, this is not always possible because of the scarcity of datable materials and high-quality paleomagnetic samples. For this reason, the previous version of the calculator (van Hinsbergen et al., 2015) used a global apparent polar wander paths (GAPWP) approach to calculate the paleolatitude of any given site. Through a community effort, DDE has built a new Paleomagnetic Database, which provides an alternative method for estimating the paleolatitude of the location of interest and aids in cross-validating GAPWP results.