New NOAA Space Weather Portal Now Available

Observation of the sun on February 10, 2025 from the GOES-16 Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI)

Courtesy of GOES-16 Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) Composite 171 Angstroms February 10, 2025

Anyone interested in Chasing the Northern Lights knows that scientists monitor phenomena in space as diligently as they do terrestrial weather. Space weather describes the changing conditions in space around our planet, anywhere from the surface of the sun to the surface of Earth. NOAA’s satellites, sensors, and imaging technology record events like solar eruptions, coronal holes, and geomagnetic storms for researchers at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) to monitor, study, and forecast the sun and space weather.

NCEI archives and scientifically stewards a broad assortment of space weather data. The data give scientists the means to make forecasts and issue space weather advisories and alerts. The new NOAA Space Weather Portal (SPOT) provides a cloud-based web portal and data processing monitor for NCEI Space Weather satellite data. The first data available in SPOT is from the Compact Coronagraph 1 (CCOR-1) onboard NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 19 (GOES-19); CCOR-1 is part of the NOAA Space Weather Follow On (SWFO) Program.

SPOT will gradually replace older static web interfaces and web accessible folders as datasets are relocated to this new portal.

A Customer-Driven Solution

The new NOAA Space Weather Portal (SPOT) was created in response to user requests. It now includes:

Instant data visualization and interaction;
Data downloads in common formats (csv, json);
Data discoverability using common search parameters;
The ability to compare multiple data products in the same plot.

SPOT is among the first in a series of planned NESDIS Common Cloud Framework based portals that will expand public access to NOAA’s environmental data. Similar platforms are in development for wildland fire and other mission areas. The new portal is a joint effort between NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), which provides the scientific and data management expertise behind the SPOT data products, the Office of Space Weather Observations (SWO), which develops and deploys operational satellite systems that study space weather, and the Office of Common Services (OCS), which manages the cloud infrastructure.

Screen capture of the NOAA Space Weather Portal (SPOT) showing plot of timing of a solar flux, graphic with location of a solar flare, and a still from a short movie of a solar flare. (Credit: NOAA NCEI) — The new NOAA Space Weather Portal (SPOT) will include Quicklook plots and movies as well as data search, download, and monitoring.

SPOT is cloud native and includes a modern front-end for easy navigation. SPOT includes Quicklook plots and movies as well as a RESTful API allowing user query of rich metadata and time-series data. SPOT also has programmatic data search/access for data analysis by scientists along with monitoring of data processing pipelines and artifact generation.

SPOT provides streamlined access to space weather data that enables informed decision-making to minimize the negative effects of space weather events. These complex events can have significant, global economic consequences and have the potential to negatively affect numerous sectors, including telecommunications systems, aviation, and power grids.