GOES Rules of the Road

The GOES 8-15 X-ray, magnetic field, and particle data are produced in real time by the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) and are distributed by the NOAA National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC). GOES 8-12 and GOES 13-15 are two different series of the GOES spacecraft, and the instrumentation is somewhat different in each series. The GOES 8-12 instruments are described by the papers listed below. More details on GOES 13-15 will be provided later. Engineering and calibration documents are available at: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/satellite/goes/documentation.html.

Magnetometer

Singer, H.J., L. Matheson, R. Grubb, A. Newman, and S.D. Bouwer, Monitoring Space Weather with the GOES Magnetometers. SPIE Conference Proceedings, Vol. 2812, p. 299-308, GOES-8 and Beyond, Edward R. Washwell, ed., 1996.

For GOES-8 magnetometer data, a correction needs to be applied for the known 7 nT systematic offset from the Z component in spacecraft coordinates according to Tsyganenko et al., 2003. One needs to subtract 7 nT from the values provided for Hp, at least for the time intervals studied in this paper.

Energetic Particles

Onsager, T.G., R. Grubb, J. Kunches, L. Matheson, D. Speich, R. Zwickl, and H. Sauer, Operational Uses of the GOES Energetic Particle Detectors. SPIE Conference Proceedings, Vol. 2812, p. 281-290, GOES-8 and Beyond, Edward R. Washwell, ed., 1996.

XRS

Bornmann, P. L., D. Speich, J. Hirman, L. Matheson, R. Grubb, H. A. Garcia, and R. Viereck, GOES Solar X-ray Sensor and Its Use in Predicting Solar-Terrestrial Disturbances, SPIE Conference Proceedings, Vol. 2812, p. 291-298, GOES-8 and Beyond, Edward R. Washwell, ed., 1996.

While quality checking and background removal are performed by the real-time algorithms, some artifacts are still present in these data. Known artifacts include: backgrounds in HEPAD and EPEAD, solar proton contamination in EPEAD electrons, cross-species contamination in MAGED and MAGPD; in-flight calibrations in the FGM fields expressed in the spacecraft coordinate frame, and absolute accuracy knowledge in the FGM; bremsstrahlung from energetic particles and saturation in the XRS. Current XRS products have a known multiplicative error that must be compensated for when these data are used for science. For more information on the instruments and data, please contact the following NOAA scientists:

XRS

Rodney Viereck (SWPC, rodney.viereck at noaa.gov), Janet Machol (NGDC, janet.machol at noaa.gov)

FGM

Howard Singer (SWPC, howard.singer at noaa.gov), Rob Redmon (NGDC, rob.redmon at noaa.gov)

MAGED/MAGPD/EPEAD/HEPAD

Terry Onsager (SWPC, terry.onsager at noaa.gov), Juan Rodriguez (NGDC, juan.rodriguez at noaa.gov)

Acknowledgements

When using these data, please acknowledge NOAA as follows: 'The GOES 8-15 X-ray / magnetic field / particle data are produced in real time by the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) and are distributed by the NOAA National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC).'