Observations of the plasma flow direction in the Earth’s magnetosheath are compared with the help of three analytical magnetic-fieldmodels, namely Kobel and Flückiger (1994), Romashets and Vandas (2019), and Vandas and Romashets (2019), which all assume current-free fields in the magnetosheath. 47 magnetosheath passages by spacecraft are analyzed in detail and performance of the models are evaluated. It is concluded that the performances are comparable.

In previous works, we found Euler potentials for the combined magnetic field of Earth's dipole, field-aligned currents, ring currents, and magnetopause surface currents (represented by Dungey's term) in the magnetosphere. The determination of shell currents is difficult.