World Data Centre for geomagnetism, Edinburgh: new data portal, API, and metadata tools

The World Data Centre (WDC) for Geomagnetism, Edinburgh serves the geomagnetism community providing access to geomagnetic data records for approximately 500 magnetic observatories worldwide, both past and present. It holds observatory minute, hourly, and annual means, as well as yearbooks, magnetic survey data and activity indices, with data reaching back to the early 1800s. This paper describes recent work to develop a new API (Application Programming Interface) to deliver the observatory data and metadata programmatically. In addition, a new data portal for users to interactively search for and download geomagnetic datasets has been developed (wdc.bgs.ac.uk). More datasets are now available including monthly means and K-indices. Improvements to the user interface allow users to view data availability, observatory metadata, and download datasets in a range of data formats. We also describe a new tool under development to allow geomagnetic observatory operators to review, update, and enhance the metadata records currently held for observatories.