qsmyYYYYMM.dat File Format Description
B. J. Anderson, 3 March 2003
Filename: qsmyYYYYMM where YYYY is the year and MM is the month.
Format: Tab delimited columnar ASCII
Time Span: One month beginning at 0800 UT on the first day of the month or the first day of the month
for which data are available and ending at 0800 UT on the first day of the next month or the last
time for which data are available within that time span.
Time Resolution: Values are provided every 15 minutes using a time window of 45 minutes centered at
the time given in the second field.
First line – comma delimited variable list:
yy,xday_all,nbndry_all,lat_max,db_net50_all,db_net95_all
Contents List:*
Col. Variable name Format Description
1 yy i4 Four digit year (i4)
2 xday_all f8.4 decimal day of year (0000 UT 1 January = 1.0000). This is the center time over which the statistics are computed.
3 nbndry_all i5 Number of 2 degree latitude bins in which at least one sample is above the statistical noise threshold.
4 lat_max f5.1 Minimum magnetic latitude boundary of data used for auroral zone statistics.
5 db_net50_all f7.1 45-55% percentile average of net delta-B (ref 1)
6 db_net95_all f7.1 95-100% percentile average of net delta-B (ref 1)
* See Ref 1 for a discussion of how these averages are derived.
Remarks: Entries for which the average cannot be computed are flagged by the mnemonic “NaN” for Not
a Number. For these cases entries for format is three characters in lieu of the floating point
format given in the Contents List The contents of this file are repeated in other files but are
assembled together here because they are a convenient summary time series.
References
1. Anderson, B. J., K. Takahashi, T. Kamei, C. L. Waters, and B. A. Toth, Birkeland current system
key parameters derived from Iridium observations: Method and initial validation results,
J. Geophys. Res., 107, A6, SMP 11-1 - 11-13, 10.1029/2001JA000080, 19 June 2002.
