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KO6BTY’s Late-Night Find: New GOES Proton & Electron Data Meets GPT-5 Charts

Getting back to that Argentina call. One thing KO6BTY pointed out was that the FoF2 numbers didn't look normal. She was correct to an extent. They definitely didn't look like they did a few  months ago. Early morning UTC time, the critical frequency numbers looked like this

Critical Frequency at time of QSO to LW2DO in Argentina

A few months ago, in February though, they looked like this at roughly the same time of day.

Critical Frequency map in February of 2025 a few hours earlier in the day

Patterns in the F2 Layer

If you're curious how she spotted the difference quickly, we've identified features that are usually on the map, the 'goose', and the 'face.'

The Goose

The Goose is characterized in profile with it's beak usually outlined in blue. It's circled by the green line above.

The Face

The Face is perhaps a bit more obvious. Again, it's circled in green. The two low critical frquency zones, (black regions), form the eyes. The black spot in the southern hemisphere makes a mouth.

Back to F2 Influencers

She started searching about for other ionospheric measurements that might explain why the numbers looked so much different. She stayed up late and found the GOES satellite incoming solar electron flux plots. Those only went back three days though, not far enough to look at the time of the QSL. We set out to find the underlying data and finally did in this directory.

https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/json/goes/primary/

At the same time, we noticed that there was also proton data. The data we used and that I'll be discussing for the rest of this post came from 

https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/json/goes/primary/differential-electrons-7-day.json

and 

https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/json/goes/primary/differential-protons-7-day.json

respectively.

We asked GPT5 to do some charting razzle dazzle for us. It did. We asked for changes, and it stalled for a bit, (that's another post, anyway...) We got the charts to work the way we wanted and we saw the following


Flux of electrons



Flux of protons

Check out the uptick in proton flux just before the Argentina call!

We've been unable to attach that uptick to any measured change the ionosphere though, so we're still learning. Still, it's nice to have yet another set of data at our disposal with pretty easy to understand charts!

Update: That's not an Uptick, This's an Uptick

I looked at the data again this morning. Yesterday there was a much larger increase in flux due to a coronal mass ejection severeal days ago.

    
Large Proton Flux Spike on 9/1/2025

Wrapping it All Up

So for now, we’ve got a great set of new data sources, some sharp plots, and one big question mark. Correlation isn’t causation, and the uptick we spotted before the Argentina call might be nothing more than timing coincidence. But when the next CME hits and the FoF2 maps get weird again, we’ll have better tools ready thanks to KO6BTY’s late-night sleuthing and GPT-5’s charting razzle dazzle.



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