High-time resolution ionospheric convection maps over Canada and the polar cap

The Fast Borealis Ionosphere (FBI) is a new data product from SuperDARN Canada which offers flow fields of the ionospheric horizontal velocity (i.e., convection maps) at a 3.75s resolution. This is 32 times the temporal resolution of traditional, 2-minute SuperDARN convection maps.

FBI convection maps are derived from the SuperDARN Canada radars at Rankin Inlet, Prince George, Inuvik, Clyde River, and Saskatoon, running in a special “wide-beam” mode, where data for the entire field-of-view is obtained every 3.75 seconds instead of every minute. The line-of-sight data from each radar is collected in each 3.75s integration, then fitted locally over northern Canada and the magnetic polar cap using the “Lompe” fitting technique.

For information on the SuperDARN wide-beam technique, see Rohel et al., [2024].

For information on fitting the wide-beam data into the FBI plots seen on this page, see Billett et al., [2025].

These plots may be suitable for publication, but require verification before use. All requests for plots, data, and verification should be directed to Daniel Billett at USask. A Python package is available for the processing and plotting of FBI data on Github. Data downloads are available below the figures.

Select a date and time to start browsing: