In case you missed it — here's a recap of news from the Unidata Program Center for the month of May, 2016.
LDM 6.13.0 Released
LDM Version 6.13.0 is now available. It has a new logging system that, by default, doesn't use the system logging daemon though this change should be invisible. It also has several other improvements and bug fixes.
2016 Community Survey Results
Earlier this year, the Unidata Users Committee asked members of the Unidata community to participate in a survey regarding their use of scientific software packages, software training, and community services, and to favor us with their insights into possible future directions for the program. The survey ran through early February, and collected responses from 261 individuals from 25 countries. Both the Users Committee and the Unidata Program Center staff thank those who completed the survey for taking the time to participate and for providing such thoughtful feedback.
Rosetta: A Data Tranformation Tool for ASCII Files
Rosetta, one of Unidata's data transformation tools, is helping the scientific community with the standardization of data. Created by Unidata software engineer Sean Arms, Rosetta is strengthening the science community's ability to standardize raw data by providing an easy way to add appropriate metadata to ASCII files, allowing them to save and store the files in either an ASCII format (e.g. .csv) or in Climate and Forecast (CF)-compliant netCDF files. Most recently, Rosetta has helped Millersville University transform weather balloon data collected as part of a nationwide experiment.
GEMPAK 7.3.0 Released
GEMPAK 7.3.0 is now available from Unidata.
EarthCube is Looking For a Project Manager
NSF's EarthCube Science Support Office (ESSO) is looking to hire a Project Manager. The EarthCube initiative is a community-driven project aimed at creating an integrated environment for the sharing of geoscience data and knowledge in an open, transparent, and inclusive manner. The Project Manager will hold a key leadership position in the ESSO, providing project management, project execution, outreach, administration, and other operational support to ESSO's efforts in contributing to EarthCube's success.
NetCDF operators (NCO) version 4.6.0
Version 4.6.0 of the netCDF Operators (NCO) has been released. NCO is an Open Source package that consists of a dozen standalone, command-line programs that take netCDF files as input, then operate (e.g., derive new data, average, print, hyperslab, manipulate metadata) and output the results to screen or files in text, binary, or netCDF formats.
Unidata McIDAS v2016 Released
Unidata McIDAS-X Version 2016 is now available for download.
NetCDF C++ 4.4.3
Version 4.4.3 of the NetCDF-C++ library is now available.
NetCDF Fortran 4.4.4
Version 4.4.4 of the NetCDF-Fortran library is now available.
2016 Community Equipment Awards
Unidata is happy to announce the Community Equipment Award recipients for 2016.
Five institutions received funding this year.
2016 Community Survey: UPC Python Developers Respond
Earlier this year, the Unidata Users Committee asked members of the Unidata community to participate in a survey regarding their use of scientific software packages, software training, and community services, and to favor us with their insights into possible future directions for the program. Under review in this article: Python activities at Unidata.
IDV 5.3
The Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) version 5.3 is available now.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Deploys AWIPS II
Thanks to a 2015 Unidata Community Equipment Award grant, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Atmospheric Science Program has been able to acquire a dedicated AWIPS II Environmental Data EXchange (EDEX) server and three Common AWIPS Visualization Environment (CAVE) workstations.
Friendly Reminder: Free Data Available from SSEC
In February of 2013, Unidata's long time collaborative partner, the University of Wisconsin's Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC), began a program at the SSEC Data Center to provide a limited amount of archived geostationary satellite data to Unidata's academic community members at no cost. This post is a friendly reminder that members of Unidata's academic community can register with SSEC and receive up to 5 Gigabytes of archived data each month free of charge. We encourage you to investigate this valuable data resource.
On the Developer's Blog
Unidata Program Center developers write regularly on technical topics on the Unidata Developer's Blog. Most recently, developer Ryan May explores using the Python Matplotlib module in the context of the atmospheric sciences.
Governing Committee News
Unidata's Users Committee met 11-12 April 2016, in Boulder, Colorado. The meeting summary will be available shortly. The next meeting will be held 26-27 September 2016 in Boulder, CO.
Unidata's Strategic Advisory Committee met 7-8 April, 2016 at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. The meeting summary will be available shortly. The next meeting will be held 6-7 October 2016 in Boulder, Colorado.
