Replaces the broken ERA5/CDS path with NCEP NARR fetched anonymously
from NCEI. NARR is GRIB1, anonymous HTTPS, byte-range-fetchable, with
1979-01-01 → 2014-10-02 coverage that lines up perfectly against the
HRRR archive start. Variables match the existing era5_profiles schema
1:1 (DPT is a direct surface dewpoint record, no SPFH derivation
needed at the surface).
Phase 1 spike done by hand: byte-range fetched 5 surface records and
3 pressure-level records for DFW 2010-06-15 12Z. wgrib2 turned out to
NOT read GRIB1 messages (rd_grib2_seq_msg, grib1 message ignored, use
wgrib), so the plan now uses cdo for both GRIB1 decoding and Lambert
conformal nearest-neighbor remap. cdo -merge is the right operator
for combining records of different variables — cdo -cat is for time
concat and silently drops mismatched levels, shell cat produces an
invalid composite. cdo emits param numbers as varNNN; mapping table
is in the plan's Architecture section.
Spike values for DFW 2010-06-15 12Z (all physically sane):
TMP_2m=296.94 K (23.8°C) DPT_2m=294.49 K (21.3°C)
HPBL=703 m PRES_sfc=99383 Pa
PWAT=45.1 mm TMP_850mb=291.52 K
HGT_850mb=1547.8 m SPFH_850mb=10.4 g/kg
Plan file kept at the original 2026-04-15-merra2-historical-backfill
filename for git history continuity even though the implementation
is NARR not MERRA-2 (history block at the top documents the pivot).
Adds the second ionospheric data source layer. Polls NOAA SWPC's free
public JSON services every 5 minutes for three products:
* Planetary K-index (1-min cadence) → geomagnetic_observations
* 10.7 cm solar flux (hourly) → solar_flux_observations
* GOES X-ray flux (1-min, 0.1-0.8nm long-wave band only) →
solar_xray_observations
All three products feed HF / Es scoring inputs that the propagation
engine will start using in a follow-up commit:
* Kp drives HF absorption and Es damping (memory notes Kp is inversely
correlated with tropo/Es stability).
* F10.7 is the SSN proxy for ITU-R P.533 HF MUF prediction.
* GOES X-ray long-wave flux is the short-wave fade (SWF) / D-layer
absorption proxy — a C-class flare starts attenuating HF within
seconds of the X-ray peak.
New context `Microwaveprop.SpaceWeather` exposes `upsert_*/1` and
`latest_*/0` per product; `SpaceWeatherFetchWorker` pulls all three
independently so one endpoint's outage doesn't block the others.
Fixtures captured from live SWPC endpoints on 2026-04-15 for the
parser tests.
Not yet wired into scoring — that's a separate commit.
First step toward physics-based HF / sporadic-E scoring. Polls GIRO's
DIDBase tabular endpoint every 10 minutes for two US ionosondes
(Millstone Hill MHJ45, Alpena AL945), parses the plain-text response
into observation rows, and upserts into a new ionosonde_observations
table keyed on (station_code, valid_time).
This gets foEs (E-layer sporadic critical frequency) into the database
as a direct measurement — the key input for predicting 144 MHz Es
openings via ITU-R P.534-6. foF2 + MUFD are the F2-layer inputs for
HF MUF predictions.
Not yet wired into scoring. Boulder/Wallops/Austin/Idaho/Point Arguello
are in the GIRO catalog but were silent when probed — add them back
if/when they come online.
Next steps: SWPC JSON (Kp, F10.7, sunspot), GOES X-ray flux, D-RAP text,
and the P.534-6 Es scoring factor that uses foEs at midpoint for the
144/440 band configs.
