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Full catalog/SPACE WEATHER
SPACE WEATHER·dataset

Space weather forecasts and solar observations (NOAA)

NOAA Space Weather Forecast and Observation Data
atmosphere NOAA NOAA active
In plain English

What it measures. Observations and forecasts of space weather, including solar activity and its effects on Earth, ranging from technical discussions to simple plain-language alerts.

How it's made. NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder collects solar and space observations and models past and present conditions to predict future ones.

How & where you'd use it. It warns operators of power grids, satellites, aviation, and communications about solar storms that could disrupt their systems.

What's measured

aws-pdsclimatemeteorologicalsolarweather

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span— → ongoing

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

Space weather forecast and observation data is collected and disseminated by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, CO. SWPC produces forecasts for multiple space weather phenomenon types and the resulting impacts to Earth and human activities. A variety of products are available that provide these forecast expectations, and their respective measurements, in formats that range from detailed technical forecast discussions to NOAA Scale values to simple bulletins that give information in laymen's terms. Forecasting is the prediction of future events, based on analysis and modeling of the past and present conditions of the environment you are interested in. In Space Weather, persistence and recurrence of active regions on the sun over the 27-day solar rotational period play an important role in accurately forecasting the space environment.

Get the data

noaa_access.py
# NOAA Open Data on AWS — public S3, no login
import s3fs

fs = s3fs.S3FileSystem(anon=True)
# find this dataset's bucket in the docs link in the sidebar, then:
# files = fs.ls("noaa-<bucket>/...")
# open NetCDF/GRIB with xarray, COGs with rioxarray
NOAA Open Data is on public AWS S3 — no login at all (anonymous access).