Abstract The existing controversy regarding the climatic response to given changes in the geomagnetic field intensity (e.g. climate cooling or warming in periods of geomagnetic field strengthening) raises scepticism about the existence of any relationship between both variables. The main shortcomings of the recent understanding of the geomagnetic field–climate relationship are the expectations for: (i) its universal character over the globe; and (ii) the zonal homogeneity of this relationship. This paper offers a new conceptual framework aimed at resolving the existing controversy and explaining the mechanism for the appearance of geomagnetic footprints on climatic records. We show that particles trapped in the Earth's radiation belts are subject to geomagnetic lensing in the parts of their trajectories closest to the surface, being focused or defocused at different regions over the world. The irregularly distributed ionization, created in such a way near the tropopause, activates various ion–molecular reactionships which affect the atmospheric composition there. Thus, the regional changes in the ozone and water vapour are furthermore projected onto the surface temperature and pressure. Consequently, the geomagnetic field–climate relationship is not a rigid but, rather, a flexible one because it is mediated by the near-tropopause ionization, ozone and humidity, with each of them being subject to the other's influence.