Predicting the South Atlantic Anomaly

The shielding that the Earth's magnetic field provides from solar emissions and cosmic rays is significantly less in the area of the southern Atlantic and South America known as the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA). The resulting increase in low altitude radiation is known to damage satellites. Observations indicate that the SAA has been growing in extent and moving westwards. The ability to accurately predict the SAA for the next 1-100 years is therefore very important. In this presentation we describe efforts to reduce uncertainties in forecasts of the geomagnetic field using surface observations of the magnetic field, data from the Ørsted-CHAMP-Swarm suite of magnetic survey satellites and magnetic field predictions from realistic core flow estimations.