VirES for Swarm

VirES for Swarm (Virtual environments for Earth Scientists) is a free virtual research platform for data from ESA's Swarm satellite constellation, developed and operated by EOX IT Services for the European Space Agency and in operation since 2016. Swarm's magnetic-field and plasma measurements and its many derived products are hard to navigate, process and visualise; VirES gives researchers one place to retrieve, filter, plot and compare them.

The service holds Swarm Level 1B magnetic (1 Hz and 50 Hz), Langmuir-probe plasma and spacecraft-position data, Level 2 products such as total electron content, field-aligned currents, auroral electrojets, auroral oval boundaries and thermospheric density, and Swarm FAST products within 15 minutes of publication. It also serves calibrated platform-magnetometer data from CHAMP, CryoSat-2, GOCE, GRACE and GRACE-FO, and INTERMAGNET ground-observatory data. Geomagnetic models such as IGRF-14, CHAOS-8 and the Swarm spherical-harmonic models, or a user-uploaded model, are evaluated on demand at the measurement positions, alongside residuals, quasi-dipole coordinates and the Kp, Dst and F10.7 space-weather indices.

Access is through an interactive web client (globe view, stacked plots, filtering, publication-ready graphics and downloads in several file formats), the VirES API with the open-source viresclient Python package, a Heliophysics API (HAPI) server, and a Jupyter-based Virtual Research Environment with preinstalled geomagnetism libraries and example notebooks. The web client, VirES API and VRE require free registration (the HAPI endpoint is open without an account); commercial use of the Jupyter environment needs EOX's permission. ESA reports use in IAGA summer schools and in university courses at Cologne and Bergen.