The Ap-index

The Ap-index provides a daily average level for geomagnetic activity. Because of the non-linear relationship of the K-scale to magnetometer fluctuations, it is not meaningful to take the average of a set of K-indices. Instead, every 3-hour K-value will be converted back into a linear scale called the a-index. The average from 8 daily a-values gives us the Ap-index of a certain day. The Ap-index is thus a geomagnetic activity index where days with high levels of geomagnetic activity have a higher daily Ap-value.

How do you determine the Ap-index?

The daily Ap-value is obtained by averaging the eight 3-hour values of ap for each day. To get the Ap-value you first need to convert the 3-hour Kp-values to ap-values. Be aware that we use the official, finalized Kp which comes from the GFZ in Potsdam, Germany. This Kp-index works slightly different then the preliminary Kp-index. Read about this in our Kp-index help article. To make it a bit more clear on how you can determine the Ap for a certain day, we will work with an example: we take one day with the following measured Kp-values: 0+, 2-, 2o, 3o, 7-, 8o, 9- and 9o. The next step would be to convert these Kp-values to ap-values. The table at the bottom of this article will help you with this. When we are done converting we get these eight ap-values: 2, 6, 7, 15, 111, 207, 300 and 400. The average of these eight values will give you the Ap for that day. The day that we used in this example day would have an Ap-value of 131. The table below will let you convert the Kp-values to ap-values.

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