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World Magnetic Model

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The World Magnetic Model (WMM) is a large spatial-scale representation of the Earth's magnetic field. It consists of a degree and order 12 spherical-harmonic expansion of the magnetic potential of the geomagnetic main field generated in the Earth’s core. Apart from the 168 spherical-harmonic "Gauss" coefficients, the model also has an equal number of spherical-harmonic Secular-Variation (SV) coefficients predicting the temporal evolution of the field over the upcoming five-year epoch. WMM is the standard geomagnetic model of the United States Department of Defense (DoD), the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the World Hydrographic Office (WHO) navigation and attitude/heading reference. It is also used widely in civilian navigation systems. The WMM is produced by the U.S. National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) in collaboration with the British Geological Survey (BGS). The model, associated software, and documentation are distributed by the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) on behalf of National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Updated model coefficients are released at 5-year intervals, with the current model (WMM2010) expiring on December 31, 2014.

Magnetic declination map at sea-level for the year 2010 derived from WMM2010.

See also

  • IGRF: International Geomagnetic Reference Field
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