Standardizing Time Series Data Access across Heliophysics and Planetary
Data Centers using HAPI
Abstract
Interoperability between datasets in Heliophysics and Planetary archives
is increasingly important to address complex science questions about
space weather and planetary plasma environments. Yet for
cross-disciplinary studies, data ingestion is often a tedious,
time-consuming process. We have developed the Heliophysics Application
Programmer’s Interface (HAPI), a standard specification that captures a
lowest common denominator method for accessing time series data. HAPI
offers the ability to request data from multiple sources using a single
interface, coupled with the ability to get identically formatted data
from each source. HAPI has been recognized as a standard by the
Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and has gained adoption at multiple
institutions in the US, including Goddard Space Flight Center’s
Coordinated Data Analysis Web (GSFC/CDAWeb), the Planetary Data System
Planetary Plasma Interactions Node (PDS/PPI), and the Laboratory for
Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) Interactive Solar Irradiance Data
Center (LISIRD). European plasma data centers such as the French Plasma
Physics Data Centre (CDPP) and European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC)
are also in the process of adopting HAPI. We present an overview of the
HAPI specification and describe how data centers can add HAPI access to
their content. We also present how scientists can plot or download HAPI
data using Python or using existing analysis tools such as Autoplot
(Faden, 2010) and Space Physics Environment Data Analysis Software
(SPEDAS) (Angelopoulos, 2019). Faden, J.B., Weigel, R.S., Merka, J. et
al. Autoplot: a browser for scientific data on the web. Earth Sci Inform
3, 41–49 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-010-0049-0 Angelopoulos
V, Cruce P, Drozdov A, et al. The Space Physics Environment Data
Analysis System (SPEDAS). Space Sci Rev. 2019;215(1):9.
doi:10.1007/s11214-018-0576-4