NOAA SWPC JSON Services

Use in your agent

Load NOAA SWPC solar-wind JSON into pandas and Parquet. Checked against the provider's documentation on Nov 2, 2026.

Access

• No account or key is needed for the static JSON files.
• The checked one-minute plasma file contains the latest 24 hours for all available spacecraft.

Request

curl -O 'https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/json/rtsw/rtsw_wind_1m.json'

Format

JSON array of one-minute records with UTC time, spacecraft source, active-source flag, proton and alpha plasma values, sample counts and quality-related fields.

Load into pandas and Parquet

Needs Python 3 with requests, pandas and pyarrow.

"""NOAA SWPC 1-minute solar-wind plasma JSON -> pandas -> Parquet. No key."""
import requests
import pandas as pd

URL = "https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/json/rtsw/rtsw_wind_1m.json"
r = requests.get(URL, timeout=120)
r.raise_for_status()
df = pd.DataFrame(r.json())
df["time_tag"] = pd.to_datetime(df["time_tag"], utc=True)
df.to_parquet("noaa_swpc_solar_wind_1m.parquet", index=False)
active = df.loc[df["active"]]
print(len(df), "rows", df["time_tag"].min().isoformat(), "to",
      df["time_tag"].max().isoformat(), "sources", ",".join(sorted(df["source"].dropna().unique())),
      "active rows", len(active))

Run by us on 2026-11-02 (python 3.13.5 | pandas 3.1.0 | pyarrow 26.0.0 | requests 2.34.2). Result: 3264 rows 2026-11-01T21:05:00+00:00 to 2026-11-02T21:02:00+00:00 sources ACE,IMAP,SOLAR1 active rows 1087

Limits

• Rate limit: Not stated.
• The real-time static JSON files cover the latest 24 hours.
• Use NOAA NCEI for a complete solar-wind archive.

Quirks

• The file includes multiple spacecraft; active=true identifies the primary source selected by SWPC at that timestamp.
• A spacecraft being inactive does not indicate that its measurements are poor quality.
• Null measurement fields and interruptions occur, so preserve the source and quality-related columns and handle missing values.

Terms and attribution

• NWS web information is public domain unless specifically noted.
• Do not claim NWS material as your own, imply endorsement or present modified material as official government information.
• Marked third-party information remains subject to the third-party provider's reuse terms.

Sources

• https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/real-time-solar-wind: “The last 24 hours of in situ data is available via”
• https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/real-time-solar-wind: “All of the operational quality solar wind plasma and magnetometer data since January 1998 is available from this plot.”
• https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/real-time-solar-wind: “The "active" tag, either true or false, indicates which spacecraft is selected as the active/primary spacecraft by the SWPC forecaster.”
• https://www.weather.gov/disclaimer: “The information on National Weather Service (NWS) Web pages are in the public domain, unless specifically noted otherwise”