Information about SWPC Data and Products

Acknowledging Space Weather Prediction Center

The information on government servers are in the public domain, unless specifically annotated otherwise, and may be used freely by the public. Before using information obtained from this server special attention should be given to the date & time of the data and products being displayed. This information shall not be modified in content and then presented as official government material. Acknowledgment is appreciated:

Information from the Space Weather Prediction Center, Boulder, CO,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), US Dept. of Commerce

Recent Notices

• Jan 10, 2011 -- STEREO Behind In-situ data Temporarily Unavailable
• Jan 10, 2011-- GOES 15 will Replace GOES 11 as
  Secondary SWPC GOES Proton, Electron and Magnetometer Satellite in February
• Oct 28, 2010 -- GOES 15 Designated PrimaryX-ray ad SXI Satellite
• Jun 1 , 2010 -- Thule Neutron Monitor Data discontinued -- Original notice April 20
• Apr 14, 2010 --- GOES 13 Designated Primary SWPC GOES Satellite for Protons, Electrons and Magnetometer
• Apr 5, 2010 --On April 14, 2010, GOES 13 will be designated Primary SWPC GOES Satellite for Protons, Electrons and Magnetometer
• Dec 01, 2009 -- GOES 14 Primary Satellite for XRS data. No Secondary Satellite for X-rays or Electrons and Protons
• June 2006 -- Using GNU Wget to Retrieve Web or Anonymous FTP files

STEREO Behind In-situ data Temporarily Unavailable

January 10, 2011: The STEREO Behind In-situ data (Solar Wind, Magnetic Field, and Particles) have been unavailable since late on January 8th.  An automated shutdown of the data processing unit on STEREO-B occurred when a current limit was violated.  It may take several days to recover and get the data flowing again

Late February 2011
GOES 15 will Replace GOES 11 as
Secondary SWPC GOES Proton, Electron and Magnetometer Satellite

January 10, 2011 -- GOES-11 is the SWPC Secondary GOES satellite for particle and magnetometer measurements. Due to resource constraints, SWPC will stop collecting and processing GOES 11 space weather data at the end of February 2011. This is eight months prior to the currently scheduled official September 2011 replacement of the GOES 11 spacecraft, . In February, GOES 15, at 90 degrees longitude, will become the SWPC Secondary GOES particle and magnetometer satellite.

The primary impact will be on the longitudinal spacing of the in situ Magnetometer and Energetic Particle data which currently come from the two geosynchronous locations GOES-13 at 75 degrees longitude (GOES East) and GOES-11 at 135 degrees longitude (GOES West). From February to September 2011, SWPC will provide particle and magnetometer data from GOES-13, the primary satellite at 75 degrees longitude and GOES 15, the secondary satellite, at 90 degrees longitude. This change effectively decreases longitude spatial separation between observations from 60 degrees to 15 degrees.

A second consequence of the change to GOES-15 will be the unavailability of some of the proton data. The 5 minute averages of proton flux for channels P8, P9, P10 and P11 will be temporarily unavailable due to calibration issues with both the GOES 13 and GOES 15 HEPAD sensors.

This situation will exist until around September 2011 when a new GOES satellite is brought from the storage location near 100 degrees longitude to the GOES West position at 135 degrees longitude, and will become the SWPC Secondary GOES satellite for particle and magnetometer data. From that point forward, it is anticipated that the nominal magnetometer and particle data will once again be available from the two operational GOES satellites; GOES-13 located at 75 and GOES-14 at 135 degrees.

The GOES 11 X-Ray Sensor on was turned off several years ago.

Comments and questions are welcome: SWPC.CustomerSupport@noaa.gov

GOES 15 Designated Primary X-ray and SXI Satellite
No Secondary Satellite for X-rays or SXI

October 28, 2010 -- GOES 15 became the Primary SWPC GOES X-ray and SXI satellite replacing GOES 14. GOES 14 will be put into storage mode. There are only minor differences in the appearance of the GOES 14 and GOES 15 X-ray data at the lowest flux levels.

There is no SWPC Secondary GOES X-ray or SXI satellite.

October 13, 2010 -- On October 28 at 0000UT GOES 15 will become the Primary SWPC GOES X-ray and SXI satellite replacing GOES 14. GOES 14 will be put into storage mode. There are only minor differences in the appearance of the GOES 14 and GOES 15 X-ray data at the lowest flux levels.

There is no SWPC Secondary GOES X-ray or SXI satellite.

Thule Neutron Monitor Data Discontinued

01 June, 2010 -- Thule Neutron Monitor data was discontinued on the SWPC public internet sites. The following data are no longer available from SWPC.

• Thule Neutron Monitor 1- and -5 minute data lists The data lists will stopped on 01 June. Older files will be removed 01 July 2010.
  
  
• Daily Thule Neutron Monitor Percent of Background field in these SWPC products was replaced with the appropriate missing data value

Daily Solar Indices 

Daily Space Weather Indices

Current  Space Weather Indices

Daily Particle Data  --   http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/indices/DPD.txt

• Daily  GEOALERT -- The ground-level cosmic ray intensity and events group in UGORI coded message is 4////

Alternate sources for Thule neutron monitor data

• The University of Delaware Bartol Research Institute  has real-time and archived plots from a number of neutron monitor stations, including Thule.

• U.S. Air Force Weather Agency distributes the source for this data, the  raw , 5-minute, coded GEOPO bulletin from Thule. The AFWA CDC subscription service: 2SYOSDOR@offutt.af.mil to set up an account. Subscribe to message id of HXGL BGTL.
  

Please contact David Marshall at SWPC with questions or concerns regarding this change.

David Marshall
Space Weather Prediction Center
david.l.marshall@noaa.gov
(303) 497-6530

GOES 13 Designated Primary SWPC GOES Satellite
for Protons, Electrons and Magnetometer

April 14 , 2010 -- GOES 13 became the Primary SWPC GOES Satellite for the Proton, Electron and Magnetometer instruments and  GOES 11 is designated the Secondary Satellite.
GOES 12 is being decommissioned.

GOES 13 HEPAD data -- channels P8 - P11 are temporarily unavailable until calibration issues are resolved.

Revised Geometrical Factors for GOES 13, 14 and 15 EPEAD Electron Channels

Starting with GOES 13, SWPC is using new geometrical factors for processing two of the three Energetic Proton, Electron and Alpha Detectors (EPEAD) electron channels (E1 and E3) and a new energy threshold for one of the electron channels (E1).  The processing of the most heavily used channel (E2) remains unchanged.  The changes are summarized as follows:

	GOES 8-12 EPS		GOES 13-15 EPEAD
Channel	Energy (MeV)	Geom. Fact. (cm^2 sr)	Energy (MeV)	Geom. Fact. (cm^2 sr)
E1	>0.6	0.078	>0.8	0.75 (9.6x increase)
E2	>2.0	0.05	>2.0	0.05
E3	>4.0	0.0175	>4.0	0.056 (3.2x increase)

These changes represent reevaluations of the instrument performance, not design changes.  There are currently no plans to reprocess the GOES 8-12 electron data.

Background: On GOES 13, 14 and 15, the Energetic Proton, Electron and Alpha Detectors (EPEAD) are essentially the same as the Energetic Particle Sensor (EPS) on GOES 8-12.  There are two EPEADs on each satellite, one looking east and one looking west.  Of the three electron channels, E1 and E2 are derived from the D3 Dome detector and E3 is derived from the D4 Dome detector.  For more information, please see T. G. Onsager et al. (1996), Operational uses of the GOES energetic particle detectors, in GOES-8 and Beyond, Proc. SPIE, Vol. 2812, edited by E. R. Washwell, pp. 281-290, Bellingham, WA.
For operational processing at SWPC, a single geometrical factor is applied to the count rates for each channel regardless of the shape of the electron spectrum.  Based in part on recharacterizations of the EPEAD performed for GOES 13, 14 and 15, the instrument contractor recommended effective single geometrical factors and energy thresholds for the three electron channels.  SWPC has adopted the recommended changes for E1 and E3. (For E2, the most heavily used electron channel, the recommended geometrical factor was only 10% lower than the old factor; therefore, for consistency, the old factor has been kept in use for GOES 13-15.) The new factors result in lower fluxes for E1 and E3.
The old geometrical factors for E1 and E3 were derived by SWPC, not by the contractor.  The difference between the old and new energy thresholds for E1 reflects a gradual “turn-on” of the channel response to electrons.  The new factors do not account for inter-calibration between units on the same spacecraft or on different spacecraft.

There is currently no Secondary satellite for X-rays. GOES 14 Solar X-ray Imager (SXI) On Orbit Checkout images are available at SWPC.

Product Changes

Data plots: Satellite Environment, Electron Flux, Proton Flux, and Magnetometer. See Today's Space Weather, SWPC Real-time Monitor Displays. Plus Plots of Solar-Geophysical Data accessible via the web or anonymous FTP

Data Lists: GOES Proton and Electron, Proton Channel, and Magnetometer
accessible via the web or anonymous FTP

GOES 13 data appears in Daily Particle Data, Current Space Weather
values, and Yesterday's Space Weather Values.
See http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpmenu/latest.html and
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpmenu/indices.html

In 'The WEEKLY', the Daily Particle Data table and the 7-day Proton and Electron plots show GOES 13 data beginning in PRF 1807.

On April 14, 2010, GOES 13 will be designated Primary SWPC GOES Satellite
for Protons, Electrons and Magnetometer

April 5 , 2010 -- GOES 13 will become the Primary SWPC GOES Satellite for the Proton, Electron and Magnetometer instruments on April 14, 2010.  GOES 12 will be decommissioned. GOES 11 will be designated the Secondary Satellite.

Product Changes

Data plots: Satellite Environment, Electron Flux, Proton Flux, and Magnetometer. See Today's Space Weather, SWPC Real-time Monitor Displays. Plus Plots of Solar-Geophysical Data accessible via the web or anonymous FTP

Data Lists: GOES Proton and Electron, Proton Channel, and Magnetometer
accessible via the web or anonymous FTP

GOES 13 data will appear in Daily Particle Data, Current Space Weather
values, and Yesterday's Space Weather Values.
See http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpmenu/latest.html and
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpmenu/indices.html

In 'The WEEKLY', the Daily Particle Data table and the 7-day Proton and Electron plots will show GOES 13 data.

GOES 14 Primary Satellite for XRS data
No Secondary Satellite for X-rays or Electrons and Protons

December 1, 2009 -- The GOES 10 satellite was decommissioned. GOES 14 became the Primary SWPC GOES X-ray Satellite.  Since the XRS data ceased from GOES 11 and GOES 12, there has been no Secondary SWPC GOES X-ray Satellite. There are minor differences in the appearance of the GOES 14 XRS data and at the lowest flux levels.

There is no Secondary Satellite for Electrons and Protons. 

Changes to the GOES XRS Data 

The GOES 10 and GOES 14 XRS instruments have very different electronics and therefore, there are some qualitative changes in the appearance of the data.  The main difference is the level of noise in the data at the lowest values.  When the background levels are low (less than 2E-7 W/m2 or A2.0), the GOES 10 data looked flat and the steps were very abrupt.   At these low flux levels, the GOES 14 data is quite noisy.  As the x-ray flux levels rise up above 2E-7, the noise decreases and the plots look very similar to the GOES 10 data. 

Other Products Changes

GOES 14 X-ray Background Flux will appear on these products beginning
with December 1 values. Daily Solar Data and Daily Space Weather Values

GOES 14 X-ray Events will appear on these products beginning December 1: Solar Event Reports and Solar and Geophysical Acitivity Summary (Energetic Events)

Using GNU Wget to Retrieve Web or Anonymous FTP files

June 15, 2006 -- GNU Wget is a free software package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, the most widely-used Internet protocols. Its a non-interactive command line tool, so it may be called from scripts, cron jobs, terminals without X-Windows support, etc. GNU Wget has many features to make retrieving files from web or FTP sites easy. GNU Wget runs on most UNIX-like operating systems as well as Microsoft Windows, and is included with most LINUX distributions.

Example: Retrieve the Solar Region Summary from SWPC and store it in a directory called "latest" relative to the users current directory.

wget --ignore-length -N -O latest/SRS.txt http://www.SWPC.noaa.gov/ftpdir/latest/SRS.txt

--ignore-length This flag prevents problems with incorrect content length

-N Turns on timestamping. This switch will cause the file to be retrieved only when it has changed on the server.

-O (upper case 'O') This switch is used to specify the output filename in this case latest/SRS.txt

There are many other options. For example, the --continue option appends only new content to a local file. Refer to wget manual

The UNIX cron utility may be used to schedule wget retrievals. For example, to retrieve the SWPC Solar Region Summary report the following command would connect to the SWPC web server at 5:40pm and 8:40pm. In this case the '-q' switch has been added which suppresses output from wget. Check with your crontab documentation for specific syntax. Also, it may be necessary in some installations to include a full path to wget executable.

40 17,20 * * * wget --ignore-length -Nq -O /tmp/latest/SRS.txt http://www.SWPC.noaa.gov/ftpdir/latest/SRS.txt

Older Notices

SWPC Data Disclaimer

Because of the SWPC / NWS emphasis on providing data as quickly as possible, some values are preliminary. SWPC / NWS cannot guarantee the overall quality and reliability of preliminary data and does not encourage its use for research purposes.

SWPC announces changes and data problems in this page and in NEWS.txt.

Continuing expansion and enhancements to SWPC services occasionally result in format changes in displays and reports. SWPC attempts to give advance notice of changes to data and products in this page and NEWS.txt.

SWPC does not include advertisements for commercial space weather products and services, nor does it make commercial products available on SWPC's Web site. However, SWPC provides a non-endorsed list of commercial space weather providers as a service to its customers.

Also see the NWS Disclaimer

Troubleshooting Tips

Problem: Receive an error message when trying to access an SWPC web page, especially when the problem persists for more than an hour.

Situation: SWPC's web services are quite robust although intermittent errors and system problems do occur. Historically the web server up-time is more than 99%. However, when a web browser receives a failure notice it often caches this response and then continues to return the failure notice to the browser user instead of trying to reload the failed web page.

Resolution: There are several approaches to clearing a cached failure message:

• Force your browser to reload the failed page by using reload or shift reload.
• Clear your browser cache manually. On IE: Tools/Internet Options/Delete Temporary Internet Files. On Netscape: Edit/Preferences/Clear History.

Glossary of Terms in Data Tables

Alerts and Forecasts - A table of SWPC Alert and Warning products, and SWPC products which contain forecasts of Space Weather data.

Archive - An archive source for this product or an archive of the data contained in the product.

ASC - The ACE Science Center (ASC) at www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/ASC has an on-line archive of ACE data.

ASCII Text Lists - In Measurements tables, products are grouped by their format. ASCII text lists are simple text files. Most of the text files are in table format that is both human readable and a fixed format for machine decoding. The SWPC generated lists follow a standard format conversion.

Indices - A table of SWPC products which contain standard space weather indices, e.g. sunspot numbers or 10.7cm solar radio flux.

Latest - The latest, most recently updated, version on this product.

Measurements - A table of SWPC products which contain data from direct space weather measurements. Measurements tables are organized by the format of the products; Real-time Displays and Plots, ASCII Text Lists, and Solar Images

Models - A table of Space Weather products based on space weather models. Models which a summary of current conditions are called Nowcasts. Some models provide a prediction of future conditions.

NGDC - The National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC), the National Geophysical Data Center, archives Solar-terrestrial Physics data. Much of the real-time data received at SWPC are archived both online and off-line by NGDC. However, the data are not archived in the SWPC format.

No - This form of the data is not available at SWPC or at another site that we are aware of.

Older - An online directory or web page for older, previously issued, products. The wording indicates how much older data is available. For example, "75 day" means that products issued in the last 75 days are available, "from 1999" means all products issued since January 1999 are available.

Readme - A descriptive text about the product with information such as: contents, source, when the product is generated or issued, and sources for further information. The icon is a link to the descriptive text. "--" indicates no descriptive text is available for this product.

Real-time Displays and Plots - In Measurements tables, products are grouped by their format. Products in the Real-time Displays and Plots section present data graphically. Real-time displays are web pages that update dynamically while plots refers to static plots that present either recent or past data. These products are bar graphs, line plots, or 2-D presentations.

Reports and Summaries - A table of SWPC products which contain reports and summaries of Space Weather data.

Title - The product Title of the product or a brief description of the data contained in the product. Products are ordered within the table by the speed at which they are updated or issued. The products which update fastest are first. Subheadings in the Title column indicates update rates, e.g. As Conditions Warrant, Daily or less, Weekly, Monthly, Longer.

Update - The product's update interval. For example, "5-min" means the product is updated every 5-min, "1st week of the month" means the product is updated once a month during the first week of the month.

Updating - A web page that automatically refreshes itself with new information at a fixed interval with no user interaction.

"--"- Indicates no descriptive text is available for this product.