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Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics

LASP Space Weather Data Products

Space weather pertains to the changing environmental conditions in space around the Earth. These environmental conditions are modified by variations in solar output, which in turn modify ambient plasma, radiation, the thickness of Earth’s atmosphere and changes in Earth’s magnetic fields. LASP provides several datasets that can be used as predictors of solar activity that can provide much needed time to safe spacecraft and warn astronauts in orbit. Below are brief descriptions of LASP’s datasets that pertain directly to space weather along with links to the datasets.

Space Weather Data Portal

The Space Weather Data Portal is web application and set of associated web services developed to provide a single interface to datasets which can be used to describe space weather events.  The portal is designed to lower the barrier to discover, visualize and access myriad datasets that describe events as they occur on the Sun and make their way across the solar system and impact the Earth.

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Forecast of MeV Electron Radiation Flux in the Earth’s Magnetosphere

This forecast runs once per hour when ACE real-time solar wind data is updated. The forecast result is compared with > 2 MeV electron flux measured by GOES-11. The result is a weighted average of 3 models based on radial diffusion, and includes a range of fluxes for different local times.

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Forecast of Dst and AL indexes

This forecast runs once per hour when ACE real-time solar wind data is updated. The Dst result is compared with the real-time Kyoto Dst. We believe the Dst result is more accurate approximation of the final Kyoto Dst than the real-time Kyoto Dst.

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SDO EVE Flare Proxies

The simple proxy models of ESP for the GOES X-ray irradiance are described in the below sections 3 and 4. The ESP proxy models provide good results for flare peaks of C, M, and X class flares but are much less accurate for non-flare times. These proxy models are especially useful for space weather operations when GOES XRS data are not available (e.g. during their eclipse periods).

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SORCE Magnesium II Core-to-Wing Index

The SORCE Magnesium II core-to-wing index is produced from SOLSTICE data using the definition in Snow et al. [2005b]. The spectral resolution of SORCE SOLSTICE (0.1 nm) allows the emission cores of the Mg II doublet to be fully resolved
and modeled with Gaussians. To determine the wing irradiances, the spectrum is convolved with a 1.1 nm triangular bandpass and then measured at the four wavelengths used by NOAA as described in Heath and Schlesinger [1986]. This
method has several advantages; most importantly it extracts a more precise measurement of solar activity [Snow et al., 2005b]. A simple linear correlation with the standard NOAA data product will scale the SORCE measurement to be compatible with the long-term composite Mg II index maintained by NOAA. The Mg II index and applications are described in Sections 1.3.2.3 and 2.1.3.

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SORCE Composite Magnesium-II Core-to-Wing Index

The Mg II Index is a proxy for solar chromospheric variability. This composite data record is based on the work of Viereck et al. (2004) Space Weather, vol 2, CiteID S10005 for measurements from 1978 through 2003. Starting in 2003, the data from SORCE SOLSTICE is used exclusively. The SOLSTICE spectra have been convolved with a 1.1 nm triangular response function to improve the long-term agreement with other measurements. All of the datasets have been normalized to a common scale to create a single long-term record.

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SORCE Composite Lyman-Alpha

The composite Lyman-alpha time series has been updated to include the latest versions of the TIMED SEE and SORCE SOLSTICE solar irradiance measurements of the bright H I 121.5 nm emission. These TIMED and SORCE data are used in the 2003-present time range and are scaled to match the UARS reference level as discussed by Woods et al. [JGR, 2000]. The composite time series goes back to 1947 using a combination of measurements and modeling results, all referenced to the UARS reference level.

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