Madrigal 2023 Exercise 2: Using the web interface

Selected Madrigal 3 site:

Data Access -> List Experiments
In the List Experiments, you can list experiments to choose from.  This interface allows you to look either at ALL Madrigal sites, or just the local one. 
  1. Choose Data Access -> List experiments 
  2. If this is the first time you have used Madrigal, you will be redirected to a page where you set up a cookie with your name, email, and affiliation.  Madrigal does not require passwords, but your data downloading is logged based on your cookie.  When you have finished with that form, again choose Data Access -> List experiments.
  3. Uncheck "Use all Madrigal sites"  so you search only the SRI Madrigal 3 site.
  4. For "Instrument category" choose "Incoherent Scatter Radars".
  5. Briefly look through the list of incoherent scatter radars for which there is data on Madrigal.
  6. Select the "Poker Flat Radar", and for a time period choose April 2023. Then hit "List experiments".
  7. Choose the "Themis36 - Auroral and convection measurements" of the Apr 9, 2023 experiment.
  8. Look at the top line.  This lists the principle investigator of this data set.  Contact them as soon as you consider using their data in a paper!  If you are really interested in an experiment or an instrument, you can sign up to be notified when that experiment or instrument is updated.
  9. Click on the "Select file" pull-down menu.  You will notice there are numerous different files associated with this experiment. For now choose one of the Fitted - Long Pulse (F-region) files first.  How many different integration periods are available?
  10. Choose the "Show Plots" button.  This will list all the plots and other documentation the instrument principal investigator added to Madrigal to help users understand the data.  Look at a sample of the plots.
  11. Select the "View File Info" button.  This will list the descriptive text embedded in the Hdf5 or netCDF4 versions of this file.
  12. Select the "Cite this file" button.  This will create a full citation with a permanent w3id.org based url which can be used as a data citation in a publication that uses this data file.
  13. Click the "Download File" button.  You will see two options "As is" and "Select parameters/filters".  For now select "As is".  This means you are downloading the file as created the instrument principal investigator.  This offers less flexibility than "Select parameters/filters" but is often much faster.
  14. Choose any of the three formats, and download that file.

 

Data Access -> Select Single Experiment

In select single experiment, you will be guided to a single experiment to examine, rather than seeing a list of experiments.  This interface allows you to look either at ALL Madrigal sites, or just the local one. Navigate to the same April 9, 2023 Poker Flat experiment using this interface.

Metadata Access

All the metadata in Madrigal can be browsed in this section.  Briefly glance at each option.  The Filter String metadata is information only needed when users are writing advanced scripts to download data.

Run Models
  1. Choose Run Models->Run Madrigal derivation engine. This page allows user to directly run the Madrigal derivation engine.  Use this page to calculate the shadow height (SDWHT) in the Geographic Coordinate parameters section, and magnetic field vector (BN,BE,BD) parameters from the Magnetic Coordinate parameters section.  Look at a single point 1000 km directly above PFISR (lat 65.130, lon -147.471) at 2007-03-27 12:00:00 UT.
  2. The Run models -> looker section is optional.  This section derivers parameters that depend on a look direction, such as would be relevant to radar measurements.
  3. The Run models -> ISR empirical models section allows you to run an empirical model to predict the conditions around a number of ISR radars.  Try it by clicking Run under Millstone Hill Radar Models. Leave all defaults, and select RUN.  Select "Local time Variation" and click "generate plots".