Leonie Pick, Monika Korte

• We introduce the Annual Magnetospheric Currents index as long-term proxy for the geomagnetic signal of magnetospheric currents on Earth valid within the time span 1900–2010. Similar to the widely used disturbance storm time and ‘Ring Current’ indices, it is based on geomagnetic observatory data, but provides a realistic absolute level and uncertainty estimates. Crucial aspects to this end are the revision of observatory crustal biases as well as the implementation of a Bayesian inversion accounting for uncertainties in the main field estimate, both required for the index derivation. The observatory choice is based on a minimization of index variance during a reference period spanning 1960–2010. The new index is capable of correcting observatory time series from large-scale external signals in a user-friendly manner. At present the index is only available as annual mean values. An extension to hourly values for the same time span is in progress.