The Geophysical Institute Magnetometer Array: Making Real-Time Geophysical Measurements Available for Operational Space Weather Needs

The Geophysical Institute Magnetometer Array (GIMA) consists of twelve magnetometer stations distributed across Alaska cutting the auroral oval. Each station is equipped with a ring-core, fluxgate magnetometer, GPS clock and data logger. Data is returned from each station to the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska where it is verified, archived, and made available to the space science community. The GIMA web page, at http://magnet.gi.alaska.edu/, provides the data from nine stations online in real-time. Additionally, the GIMA web page provides data from non-GIMA magnetometer stations. The GIMA data set available online spans the time period 1994 to the present. This presentation describes current efforts to update the data distribution channels while maintaining existing data access methods. In a typical month, there are approximately 30 different users of the data set (some using archival data for event studies, other using real time data for operational Space Weather forecasting). The GIMA data set has been available as ASCII and netCDF data files. We are migrating the data to a PostgreSQL database. This database is coupled with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) geoserver which redistributes the data in various OGC standard-compliant formats (e.g. kml, WCS, WDS). This effort is motivated in large part to improve data discovery by new Space Weather product generators and to feed the data in multiple Virtual Observatories (VxOs). We will describe our efforts and illustrate our successes.