The International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF) generation 12: BGS candidates and final models

The International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF) model is a reference main field magnetic model updated on a quinquennial basis. The latest revision (generation 12) was released in January 2015. The IGRF-12 consists of a definitive model (DGRF2010) of the main field for 2010.0, a model for the field at 2015.0 (IGRF2015) and a prediction of secular variation (IGRF-12 SV) for the forthcoming five years until 2020.0. The remaining coefficients of IGRF-12 are unchanged from IGRF-11. Nine candidates were submitted from various international teams for consideration to the IGRF Taskforce led by Erwan Thebault (Nantes) and Chris Finlay (DTU Space). The final models were computed from all candidates using a Huber weighting in space scheme. In this poster, we outline the modelling steps for the three BGS candidate models and compare them to the other submitted candidates and the final official models released as IGRF-12.