juliensimon/solar-proton-events

Solar Proton Events

Part of the Space Weather Datasets collection on Hugging Face.

Solar proton events (SPEs) affecting the Earth environment from 1976-04-30 to 2026-01-18. Currently 319 events where the >10 MeV proton flux exceeded 10 particle flux units (pfu) as measured by GOES spacecraft at geosynchronous orbit.

Dataset description

Solar proton events occur when protons are accelerated to high energies by solar flares or coronal mass ejections (CMEs). When these energetic particles reach Earth, they can disrupt satellite electronics, increase radiation doses for astronauts and high-altitude aviation, degrade HF radio communications, and affect GPS accuracy.

This dataset covers the complete NOAA record from 1976 onward, including:

• Proton flux: peak >10 MeV flux in particle flux units (pfu)
• Associated flares: X-ray class (X, M, C, B) and optical classification
• Source location: heliographic coordinates of the associated flare
• Radio emissions: Type II and Type IV radio burst associations
• CME speed: linear speed of associated coronal mass ejection (km/s)

Schema

Column	Type	Description
start_datetime	datetime	Event start time (UTC)
peak_datetime	datetime	Time of peak >10 MeV flux (UTC)
peak_flux_pfu	int	Peak proton flux >10 MeV (particle flux units)
region_number	string	NOAA active region number
location	string	Heliographic coordinates of associated flare
flare_class	string	X-ray flare class (e.g., X5, M7, C3)
flare_optical	string	Optical flare classification (e.g., 2B, 3B)
type_ii_radio	bool	Type II radio emission observed
type_iv_radio	bool	Type IV radio emission observed
cme_speed_km_s	int	CME linear speed (km/s), where available

Quick stats

• 319 events (1976-04-30 to 2026-01-18)
• Peak flux range: 10 to 43,500 pfu (median: 60 pfu)
• Associated flares by X-ray class:
  • C-class: 25
  • M-class: 129
  • X-class: 126

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/solar-proton-events", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Largest proton events
top = df.nlargest(10, "peak_flux_pfu")
print(top[["start_datetime", "peak_flux_pfu", "flare_class", "location"]])

# Events with X-class flares
x_class = df[df["flare_class"].str.startswith("X", na=False)]
print(f"X-class associated events: {len(x_class)}")

Data source

NOAA NCEI Solar Proton Events compiled by the Space Weather Prediction Center.

Pipeline

Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets

Support

If you find this dataset useful, please give it a ❤️ on the dataset page and share feedback in the Community tab! Also consider giving a ⭐️ to the space-datasets repo.

Citation

@dataset{solar_proton_events,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {Solar Proton Events},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/solar-proton-events},
  note = {Based on NOAA NCEI Solar Proton Events data}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0