Construction of the spatial-temporal model of the main geomagnetic field using satellite data

Abstract

The spatial-temporal model of the geomagnetic field has been constructed using the data of the high-accuracy survey of the CHAMP German satellite, obtained during its operation from May 2001 to September 2007. The daily average spherical harmonic models calculated at an interval of four days are used as initial data in order to expand these models by the method of natural orthogonal components (NOCs). It has been indicated that the obtained NOC series rapidly converges. The secular variations, secular acceleration, and Dst variation are distinguished as individual NOC components, which makes it possible to construct the spatial-temporal field model. In addition, the models-predictions have been constructed for the year 2008 based on the candidate models of the main field and the secular variation for the year 2005, which were used to obtain the IGRF2005 international model. A comparison of the models-predictions with the model constructed for the year 2008 using our method indicated that the accuracy of our model is not lower than that of the models, obtained by other scientific groups using the traditional method.