HARPs: Tracked Active Region Patch Data Product from SDO/HMI

We describe an HMI data product consisting of tracked magnetic features on the scale of solar active regions, abbreviated HARPs (HMI Active Region Patches). The HARP data series has been helpful for subsetting individual active regions, for development of near-real-time (NRT) space weather indices for individual active regions, and for defining closed magnetic structures for computationally-intensive algorithms like vector field disambiguation. The data series builds upon the 720s cadence activity masks, which identify large-scale instantaneously-observed magnetic features. Using these masks as a starting point, large spatially-coherent structures are identified using convolution with a longitudinally-extended kernel on a spherical domain. The resulting set of identified regions is then tracked from image to image. The metric for inter-image association is area of overlap between the best current estimate of AR location, as predicted by temporally extrapolating each currently tracked object, and the set of instantaneously-observed magnetic structures. Once completed tracks have been extracted, they are made into a standardized HARP data series by finding the smallest constant-angular-velocity box, of constant width in latitude and longitude, that encompasses all appearances of the active region. This data product is currently available, in definitive and near-real-time forms, with accompanying region-strength, location, and NOAA-AR metadata, on HMI's Joint Science Operations Center (JSOC) data portal.; HARP outlines for three days (2001 February 14, 15, and 16, 00:00 TAI, flipped N-S, selected from the 12-minute cadence original data product). HARPs are shown in the same color (some colors repeated) with a thin white box surrounding each HARP. HARPs are tracked and associated from image to image. HARPs, such as the yellow one in the images above, need not be connected regions. Merges and splits, such as the light blue region, are accounted for automatically.