Swarm Level 2 Processor

The Swarm Level-2 Processor is the ESA SCARF (Swarm Satellite Constellation Application and Research Facility), which operates the Level-2 Processing System (L2PS) under contract to ESA.^[1] The SCARF consortium is led by DTU Space (Lyngby, Denmark) and includes TU Delft (Netherlands), BGS (Edinburgh, UK), ETH Zurich (Switzerland), GFZ Potsdam (Germany), and IPGP (Paris, France), with contributions from CUP Prague (Czech Republic), NOAA Boulder (USA), and GSFC/NASA (USA).^[2]

Inputs are Level-1b data from the Vector Field Magnetometer (VFM) and Absolute Scalar Magnetometer (ASM) on each of Swarm Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie, supplemented by accelerometer (ACC), Electric Field Instrument (EFI), and GPS receiver data. Mission data coverage runs from 2013-11-25 to present.^[3]

L2PS products include core magnetic field models (MCO_SHA_2C, MCO_SHA_2D via Comprehensive Inversion and Dedicated chains), lithospheric field (MLI_SHA_2C, MLI_SHA_2D, MLI_SHA_2E), magnetospheric field (MMA_SHA_2C, MMA_SHA_2F fast-track), ionospheric field (MIO_SHA_2C, MIO_SHA_2D), precise orbit products (POD), field-aligned currents (FAC), ionospheric bubble index (IBI), total electron content (TEC), ionospheric plasma density (IPD), equatorial electrojet (EEF), auroral electrojet (AEJ), thermospheric density and winds (DNS/WND), and plasmapause boundary (PPI_FAC).^[4][5] The processor baseline stood at L2 v3.18 as of 2026-06-11.^[3] Products are distributed via ESA swarm-diss.eo.esa.int and VirES for Swarm.