Hi,
I'm developing a discord bot to detect solar flares from GOES X-ray data. Currently, I'm taking the log10 of the "flux" field from https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/json/goes/primary/xrays-1-day.json. However this overcalculates strong flares (M2.6 from ~5h ago gets classified as M4.22). What is the correct processing for this data?

You don't have to log10' it. It is in W/m².
M1.0 is 10^-5 W/m², or 0.00001 W/m². The value from the M2.6 flare is:
0.00002654... (W/m²)

  {
    "time_tag": "2024-07-28T12:50:00Z",
    "satellite": 16,
    "flux": 0.000026450758014107,
    "observed_flux": 0.000026479003281565,
    "electron_correction": 2.82463403777911e-8,
    "electron_contaminaton": false,
    "energy": "0.1-0.8nm"
  }

 

You could divide that value by 10^-5, if you need the M-class value.

Thank you, the log10 from determining the class and not realised that that's not what I want