Convection Map Archive
Convection maps produced by SuperDARN Canada have undergone the following pipeline: RAWACF files are converted to FITACF files via the FITACF 3.0 algorithm. The FITACF files are converted to MAP files following the process outlined on the RST website. See below for the exact process. The convection map plots are processed from these map files by pyDARN. These plots are for quick-look browsing only, and are not publication quality. The Heppner-Maynard boundary is not constrained and may be found at a lower latitude in the plots than expected. Each search will give an overview of ten minutes of data each, with five 2-minute averaged plots.
Map Procedure Used
These plots require and installation of the most recent version of RST and pyDARN. The following outlines the specific procedure to make the map files and convection plots:- RAWACF data is converted to FITACF using the command:
make_fit -fitacf3 file.rawacf > file.fitacf - FITACF 3.0 data is despecked:
fit_speck_removal -quiet file.fitacf > despeckedfile.fitacf - Despecked data is gridded into daily grid file:
make_grid -xtd -tl 120 -i 120 -minsrng 800 -maxsrng 2000 -vemax 100 -vmax 3000 -ion despeckedfile.fitacf > singlerad.grd - Daily grid files for each radar are combined:
combine_grid *.grd > YYYYMM_HEM.grid - Generate an empty map file for given hemisphere (add
-shfor south):
map_grd YYYYMM_HEM.grid > YYYYMM_HEM.empty.map - Add the HMB:
map_addhmb -wdt 100 YYYYMM_HEM.empty.map > YYYYMM_HEM.hmb.map - Add the IMF (OMNI data is downloaded and converted to a text file for the given times before running this line):
map_addimf -omni -d 00:10 -if omni_data.txt YYYYMM_HEM.hmb.map > YYYYMM_HEM.imf.map - Add the statistical model:
map_addmodel -o 6 -d l YYYYMM_HEM.imf.map > YYYYMM_HEM.model.map - Fit the spherical harmonics and get the final MAP file:
map_fit YYYYMM_HEM.model.map > YYYYMM_HEM.map
This is then plotted using the pyDARN command in python:
map_data, _ = pydarn.read_map('YYYYMM_HEM.map')
pydarn.Maps.plot_mapdata(map_data, start_time=(datetime obj), lowlat=50, coastline-True, contour_fill=True, color_vectors=False)
