The International Radiation Belt Environment Modeling (IRBEM) library is freely distributed under the umbrella of the PRBEM COSPAR panel (http://cosparhq.cnes.fr/Scistr/Scistr.htm#PRBEM). In 2003 ONERA-DESP (space environment department) decided to put together a set of source codes into a library dedicated to radiation belt modeling. The toolkit was then called ONERA-DESP-LIB. Because the project has grown along time, and because its development is nowadays more like an international collaborative effort, it has been decided in 2008, after COSPAR 2008 Montreal assembly, to move the library name to IRBEM-LIB (which refers to COSPAR PRBEM panel) and to distribute it under COSPAR PRBEM umbrella (a neutral body).

This library is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

If you have downloaded the IRBEM-LIB, you should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this library. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.
COSPAR does not warrant or assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, use, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed in documents and software available from the IRBEM library or developed as a result of the use of information or software made available from the library.


The library allows to compute magnetic coordinates and fields for any location in the Earth's environment for various magnetic field models, coordinate transformation and evaluate particle fluxes from various specification models. For more details have a look to the User's guide section.

Note that to be aware of new release for the library, you must send an Email to S. Bourdarie to be added in the mailing list.

In the IRBEM-LIBRARY you will find the following sections:

• Description
  • This web page
• User's guide
  • Introduction to the library (authors, use ...)
  • Installation and use
  • Detailled description for each function
• Download official releases
  • Download source code of the current version
  • Download compiled library for windows32, linux i386, linux AMD64
• Download latest source codes (beta)
  • Download latest source codes eventually modified after official release