SWx TREC’s Space Weather Data Portal: a launch pad for space weather research
Journal Article
Overview
abstract
One obstacle to space weather research is the practical challenge of; accessing relevant data. Space weather data are housed in disparate; repositories, each with its own unique focus, be it solar,; magnetospheric, atmospheric, or earth-based. Much of the effort spent; acquiring data could instead be spent on space weather research and; education. To address this problem, the Space Weather Technology,; Research, and Education Center (SWx TREC), at the University of; Colorado, Boulder, in collaboration with the Laboratory for Atmospheric; and Space Physics (LASP), has developed the Space Weather Data Portal; (https://lasp.colorado.edu/space-weather-portal), a tool built by and; for the space weather community. Through the Data Portal, previously; dispersed space weather data are in one unified place, accessible to; scientists, students, and curious individuals. The focus is on the users; and their ability to discover, display, compare, overplot, and download; relevant data. A user can filter for past events then easily display and; download data related to that event, from the moment it occurs on the; Sun, as it travels through space and the atmosphere, to the impacts it; has on the Earth. Analysis of space weather events via the Data Portal; has proved useful for forecaster training and online learning. The; community-created Event Library is a short-cut to curated data; collections that provide narratives for context and serve as launch pads; for further space weather exploration. This presentation will highlight; contributions to the Data Portal from the community: datasets, event; markers, timelines, and narrated data collections. Your contributions; are encouraged as new resources and improvements are deployed every few; weeks. Through this iterative, collaborative process, the Data Portal; aims to increase awareness of space weather and its impacts and decrease; the time between research and real-world applications.
