Notes and Warnings Regarding WIND/MFI Data

Newly Reprocessed MFI 3 second data (October 14, 2011) The Wind Magnetic Field Investigation (MFI) primary, 3-second time resolution data set has been completely reprocessed from launch (November, 1994) to present. The new data product includes the following improvements and corrections:

(1) It incorporates the final Bz offset corrections. While this changed the Bz values by only a small amount (~0.1 nT) during the first half of the mission, more significant changes are present starting from November 2004 that can reach corrections of ~1.5 nT.

(2) Occasional data spikes have been completely eliminated.

(3) During the early part of the mission the primary inner magnetometer got saturated for a number of few days-long intervals. Data for these time periods have been replaced with calibrated outer magnetometer data.

(4) The spacecraft spin phase angle has been corrected for all Earth and Lunar shadow intervals. This resulted in major changes in the ecliptic components of the magnetic field vector for most of these intervals.

(5) A higher percentage of the data was recovered for the beginning of the mission.

(6) Errors in the spacecraft position data at equinoxes have been fixed.

This newly reprocessed and fully calibrated data has received a version 5 designation. This version should always be used in preference over lower version number data. The version number is encoded in the filename extension and inside the CDF files under the DATA_VERSION global attribute. Since it takes at least 15 days of data to generate reliable Bz offset corrections, version 3 files with extrapolated Bz offset values are still generated for the most recent two weeks time period. We also generate version 4 data that already incorporates the final Bz corrections but might not have the most accurate and final spacecraft position information. The version 5 data generation generally runs 100 days behind real time.

WARNING: KP data has been reprocessed with improved zeros
starting 1996 JAN 01.

NOTES: KP one minute resolution data is 2-3 days behind today's date.