The World Magnetic Model

The World Magnetic Model is a joint product of the United States’ National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the United Kingdom’s Defence Geographic Centre (DGC). The WMM was developed jointly by the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC, Boulder CO, USA) (now the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)) and the British Geological Survey (BGS, Edinburgh, Scotland).

The World Magnetic Model is the standard model used by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.K. Ministry of Defence, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), for navigation, attitude and heading referencing systems using the geomagnetic field. It is also used widely in civilian navigation and heading systems. The model, associated software, and documentation are distributed by NCEI on behalf of NGA. The model is produced at 5-year intervals, with the current model expiring on December 31, 2019.

World Magnetic Model News

3/20/2019: MagQuest Challenge Launched

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) launched a $1.2M challenge to advance geomagnetic data collection for the World Magnetic Model. More information can be found on the MagQuest Website.

2/28/2019: New WMM Mil-Spec Released

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has released a new military specification document, MIL-PRF-89500B, for the World Magnetic Model. This document updates the error requirements for WMM and is now available.

2/4/2019: WMM2015v2 Release

The full release of the out-of-cycle WMM (WMM2015v2) is now available. All WMM products and services have been updated. This new model addresses the degraded performance of WMM2015 in the Arctic region and supersedes it.

Please contact geomag.models@noaa.gov for comments or questions.