A scientific database for real-time Neutron Monitor measurements - taking Neutron Monitors into the 21st century
Abstract
The Neutron Monitor Database project, www.nmdb.eu, has been funded in 2008 and 2009 by the European Commission's 7th framework program (FP7). Neutron monitors (NMs) have been in use worldwide since the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957 and cosmic ray data from the IGY and the improved NM64 NMs has been distributed since this time, but a common data format existed only for data with one hour resolution. This data was first distributed in printed books, later via the World Data Center ftp server. In the 1990's the first NM stations started to record data at higher resolutions (typically 1 minute) and publish in on their webpages. However, every NM station chose their own format, making it cumbersome to work with this distributed data. In NMDB all European and some neighboring NM stations came together to agree on a common format for high-resolution data and made this available via a centralized database. The goal of NMDB is to make all data from all NM stations available in real-time. The original NMDB network has recently been joined by the Bartol Research Institute (Newark DE, USA), the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the North-West University (Potchefstroom, South Africa). The data is accessible to everyone via an easy to use webinterface, but expert users can also directly access the database to build applications like real-time space weather alerts. Even though SQL databases are used today by most webservices (blogs, wikis, social media, e-commerce), the power of an SQL database has not yet been fully realized by the scientific community. In training courses, we are teaching how to make use of NMDB, how to join NMDB, and how to ensure the data quality. The present status of the extended NMDB will be presented. The consortium welcomes further data providers to help increase the scientific contributions of the worldwide neutron monitor network to heliospheric physics and space weather.
- Publication:
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39th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- July 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012cosp...39.1891S