DAWG Update: May 2026 (SuperDARN Workshop 2026)

Items for the PIs

We need more active members in this Working Group in order to make it successful. Even if the members are not able to meet in real-time, we try to post meeting notes on github and participation in testing and development through RST’s github repository would be appreciated. Current members are stretched thin and not always able to give the attention necessary to make this working group successful. We ask the PIs to help us with increasing our membership or provide any feedback on how our working group can function better.

Convection Map Guidelines

Around the 2025 SuperDARN Workshop, there was a call for a set of guidelines to be organized by this Working Group that would allow a user to easily work through the basic processing routines offered by rst to produce some SuperDARN data products. The Working Group is still iterating on the following text as a solution for this request. The guidelines will be on the agenda for the Working Group meeting during the Workshop with a goal of finalizing the content. In the future, this will be added to the RST readthedocs site . Please provide any comments on this guideline to the WG.

Proposed RST processing guideline

Activities Since Nov. 2025 report

The Data Analysis Working Group (DAWG) continues to hold monthly meetings with about 5 to 6 members attending each meeting. We will be holding an in-person meeting during the 2026 SuperDARN Workshop with a possible remote participation.

Incorporation of Sym-H into HMB calculation

As presented during the 2025 SuperDARN Workshop, there’s an interest of including Sym-H into the HMB calculation for our convection maps. This was reported during the last PI report and the conversation is continuing within the DAWG. One difficulty is capturing a solution of when Kp is above 6 since the sample size of events is small and each time is unique.

Lower Miminum Limit of Heppner-Maynard Boundary (HMB)

Stemming from an older discussion about the lower limit of the HMB, the DAWG has incorporated a lower limit of 30 degrees into the development branch of RST. This means the next release of RST will include this lower limit which should allow for further expansion of the boundary during some of the major storms seen over the last +2 years. Some discussion around this decision can be found initially in this github issue with implementation and testing found in this pull request. This development will start a timeline for the next release of RST.

Widebeam data downsampling

Some initial discussions have begun about how downsampled widebeam data should be handled. This data is mostly coming from the University of Saskatchewan radars where a wide field-of-view mode is being run but wanting to downsample this data to resemble normalscan-like operations. The discussion is how should the downsampled data be identified. There are two thoughts so far in discussions with this WG:

  1. Create a unique control program ID (CPID) for the downsampled data. CPID databases would be updated with a note that this data is downsampled from a larger data set.

  2. Create a new or use an existing data field as a flag to mark this data has downsampled from a widebeam mode.

So far, the discussions in the DAWG meetings have favored the second option as the first option would require a user extra effort to lookup what a certain CPID number means for radar operations and describing the data. The second option would utilize a new data field that would be described in updated documentation for this data type.

RST 5.1.1

After the RST 5.1 release, it was noticed there were a few radar update omissions or errors. These updates, combined with a few other smaller updates were released on Dec. 11, 2025.

To highlight changes for the PIs:

Thanks to the PIs that reviewed your respective hdw.dat files during this update.

Other Issues/Topics