UK Solar System Data Centre
This is a warning that SEC is facing a serious financial shortfall from 1st October 2003 if current funding recommendations are carried out. At the moment the options are a funding cut of 40% or a complete cessation of funding for Space Weather in NOAA altogether. It could be that the SEC reports you currently receive will no longer be available.
This web site uses some SEC data products and services. Hence some of our services may be affected by any cuts that SEC may be forced to make. At present we know of no final word on the funding outcome for the SEC, and still further have no knowledge of which services SEC would be most likely to cut back on.
Currently the WDC fetches four daily reports from the Space Environment Centre. We forward these reports by email to some users (who are also being contacted by email with regard to this). We provide the seven most recent of three reports via our web site at http://www.wdc.rl.ac.uk/wdcc1/daily_reports.html.
The WDC also updates some of its own databases of geomagnetic indices (Ap, Kp, Boulder sunspot number and 10.7cm solar radio flux) with values from SEC reports. In the event of this service ceasing the UKSSDC would still hold these data sets and update them regularly, but it is not clear that we would be able to update values as promptly as we do now. The UKSSDC currently provides Ap forecast values for the next 3 days. These are produced by SEC and are not available from another source. Our geophysical indices are available at http://www.wdc.rl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wdcc1/secure/geophysical_parameters.pl
The Space Environment web site is at http://www.sec.noaa.gov/.
This information will be updated as more definite details are made available.