Independent validation of Swarm Level2 magnetic field products and 'Quick Look' for Level 1b data

Magnetic field models are produced on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA) by an independent scientific consortium known as the Swarm Satellite Constellation Application and Research Facility (SCARF), through the Level 2 Processor (L2PS). The consortium primarily produces magnetic field models for the core, lithosphere, ionosphere and magnetosphere. Typically, for each magnetic product, two magnetic field models are produced in separate chains using complementary data selection and processing techniques. Hence, the magnetic field models from the complementary processing chains will be similar but not identical. The final step in the overall L2PS therefore involves inspection and validation of the magnetic field models against each other and against data from (semi-) independent sources (e.g. ground observatories). We describe the validation steps for each magnetic field product and the comparison against independent datasets, and we show examples of the output of the validation. In addition, the L2PS also produces a daily set of `Quick Look' output graphics and statistics to monitor the overall quality of Level 1b data issued by ESA. We describe the outputs of the `Quick Look' chain.