Recently, Prof. Shi Quanqi, associate Prof. Tian Anmin and the members of their research group within the ''Climbing'' Program of the ''Solar eruption and its impact on the palanetary space environment ''and the institute of space sciences at Shandong University were invited to publish a review article entitled "Dimensionality, Coordinate System and Reference Frame for Analysis of In-Situ Space Plasma and Field Data" in Space Science Reviews, one of the prestigious journals in our field. In addition, the team developed methods for determining the dimensionality, directions and velocities of spatial magnetic structures, which have been incorporated into NASA's standard data processing platform.
In the analysis of in-situ space plasma and field data, an establishment of the coordinate system and the frame of reference are helpful in simplifying problems and improving understanding of the processes involved. One of the most important tasks of space data analysis is to compare the data with simulations and theory, which is facilitated by an appropriate choice of coordinate system and reference frame. While in simulations and theoretical work the establishment of the coordinate system and the reference frame is often straightforward, in space data analysis these are not defined a priori, and need to be deduced from an analysis of the data itself. In the review article, starting from the definition of dimensionality of observed data，the authors systematically reviewed the past and recent approaches in space data analysis , compared their application areas and discussed the application prospects of some methods to other fields. In particular, the paper introduced the Minimum Directional Derivative (MDD) and Spatial-Temporal Difference (STD) methods developed by Professor Shi Quanqi et al, which are now included as standard tools in SPEDAS (Space Physics Environment Data Analysis Software) of NASA, which serve scientists carrying out analysis on multi-satellite data across the world.
Link to the article:
Https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-019-0601-2
Spedas toolkit download address:
Http://themis.ssl.berkeley.edu/socware/bleeding_edge/spdsw_latest.zip
Guidelines for the use of MDD&STD GUI interfaces:
Http://spedas.org/wiki/index.php?Title=Tools_Menu_-_SPEDAS_GUI
