Rapid modelling of the large-scale magnetospheric field from Swarm satellite data

As part of the European Space Agency (ESA) Swarm mission, ESA has commisioned an independent scientific consortium known as the Swarm satellite Constellation Application and Research Facility (SCARF) to develop and operate the Level 2 Processor (L2PS). Its purpose is to derive high quality scientific products from the mission’s data. One such product is the Fast-Track Magnetospheric Model (FTMM), which is a model of the large scale vector magnetospheric field and its induced counterpart. This model is generated once per satellite orbit, in near real-time by a robust, autonomous algorithm. Its intended use is similar to that of the Disturbance storm time Index (Dst): characterising the rapidly varying magnetospheric field, as an input to other global field models, and for the space weather community. In this paper we describe in detail the the FTMM algorithm and assess its ability to recover the magnetospheric component from the consortium’s test satellite data set.