Abstract A new method is introduced to find the relatively sudden temporal changes or jerks of the geomagnetic field over the polar regions. Geomagnetic jerk events during the 20th century have mostly been identified from direct measurements at mid-latitude geomagnetic observatories. Recently, however, global magnetic spherical harmonic models like CM4 and CHAOS have been found effective in identifying the Antarctic events of 1969, 1978, 1985, 1991 and 2003 that were followed by jerks in the Arctic region with time delays of one to three years. The present study extends these events into earlier decades from 1900 to 1985 using the global harmonic model gufm1 with localized spherical coefficients or Slepian functions for the polar regions. Power spectral minima for the localized coefficients correlate with and thus help identify the abrupt changes in geomagnetic secular acceleration models. The time delay between the Antarctic and Arctic geomagnetic jerks was also confirmed.