McIDAS, ldm-mcidas, Unidata-Wisconsin, Collaborations, and Cooperating Community Server Activities
Fall 2003
Tom Yoksas
September 25, 2003
Vision
Efforts referenced within this report is based on five of the six
endeavors articulated in the Unidata 2008 Proposal:
Endeavor 1: Responding to a broader and more diverse community
Endeavor 2: Comprehensive Support Services
Endeavor 4: Software to analyze and visualize geoscience data
Endeavor 5: Distributed, organized collections of digital material
Endeavor 6: Improved data access infrastructure
Unidata McIDAS-X, -XCD
Version 2003 released on August 6. As of September 23, 2003 38
sites have downloaded Unidata
McIDAS 2003. For comparison, 105 sites have downloaded
version 2002.
full support of Zlib compressed NOAAPORT GINI imagery added
to v2003 release but addendum has not yet been released
incorporate latest SSEC development for support of decoded model
data in files with non-standard names)
ADDE server for grid and point source data in GEMPAK format(s)
is still a priority. This work will allow COMET case studies to be
directly usable by ADDE enabled applications (McIDAS and IDV).
porting of McIDAS-X to MacOS-X was worked on actively
for a short period of time. Investigations revealed
problems with the OS-X loader, and an incompatibility
with the version of X running on the test machine. Further
development has been taken over by SSEC.
early states of ADDE server for NEXRAD Level II data (individual
elevations, not volume)
continuing support/bug fixes for Unidata and SSEC McIDAS-X, -XCD
ldm-mcidas and Unidata-Wisconsin datastream
current release is v2003 (release announced on August 6).
announced desire to increase the temporal frequency and number
of wavelength channels (bands) of the
GOES-East and
GOES-West products sent in the Unidata-Wisconsin datastream
while also increasing the spatial coverage of the GOES-East
products to cover South America (when the satellite is
providing those scans). User feedback was sparse (less
that 10 sites replied to a call for comment), but what
was received was in favor of the changes. Given the lack
of opposition, we plan to move ahead with the datastream
changes in the beginning of October.
Collaborations
Collaboration activities remain mostly unchanged since the last report.
Details can be found in May 1 Policy Committee Report.
The most active collaboration, even though it is being conducted in spare
time, is the MeteoForum initiative that is funded by UCAR Director's
Opportunity Fund (Jack Fellows):
MeteoForum - Unidata/COMET
continued working with MeteoForum WMO RMTC representatives
to explore use of LDM to feed conventional, model, and
satellite datasets. Most recently, met with representatives
from Venezuela to discuss their goals for modernizing
meteorological services.
Realtime feeds operational
to the Universidad Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
Success of data delivery is based on LDM-6 advances coupled
with the international networking initiative AMPATH
(Florida International University, Global Crossing, and
Internet-2).
Universidad Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) is now
acting as the top level IDD distribution node
for Brazil and Argentina. UFPA and other Brazilian
universities will feed directly from UFRJ after they have
been upgraded to a current version of the LDM-6.
The resulting data distribution network is known as IDD-Brazil.
provided a MeteoForum/IDD-Brazil white paper
to the Unidata NSF/ATM Program Manager, Cliff Jacobs. The information
from this status update is the basis for a presentation at the
January AMS Annual Meeting to be held in Seattle, WA.
User Support
continuing support of over 150 sites
growing participation by foreign universities (McIDAS-X, LDM)
(Argentina, Brazil, China (Hong Kong), Costa Rica, France, Portugal,
United Kingdom, Jamaica, Mexico, Spain, Russia (Institute of
Atmospheric Optics in Siberia), Thailand)
statistics for UPC support email can be found in a separate
report
Cooperating Community Data Servers - Prelude to THREDDS
