AGU Highlights Edition

Look for Unidata at the American Geophysical Union Fall meeting, December 5-8. Staff are participating on several levels that include paper and poster presentations and chairing sessions.

The Earth and Space Science Informatics session inaugurated by Unidata and co-convenors as Cyberinfrastructure for Earth Systems Science at the 2004 fall meeting, continues as a regular session this year beginning Tuesday morning December 6 at 8:00 AM.

Plan to stop by the UCAR Office of Programs booth spaces, numbers 113, 115, and 117 to bring yourself up to date on the UOP and Unidata and new or continuing activities. Staff from all UOP programs will be in the booth at different times to meet you and to answer your questions. See: news brief.

On Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) developers will be on hand in the UOP booth to provide demos and answers to questions about the software.

We invite you to browse the schedule of Unidata staff presentations.

We'll be seeing you in San Francisco.

A global community of netCDF users includes data providers, software developers, and researchers who need portable, self-describing data. Use of netCDF for model outputs and data archives can enhance interoperability and make distributed data access practical by following a few rules of thumb based on experience. Such rules of thumb are also known as "Best Practices".

The network Common Data Form (netCDF) is a data model, interface, library, and format for scientific, array-oriented data access. Its widespread acceptance and use is due to simplicity and versatility in representing many common kinds of scientific data and its support for common patterns of scientific data access. NetCDF has become a community standard for creating, accessing, and sharing scientific data. It's the latter characteristic, "sharing" that has, in part, contributed to the perception that a document about best practices for writing netCDF files, perhaps more appropriately dubbed "better practices," needed to be created. And it has been.

You will find the netCDF Best Practices document here. The evolving document is intended to be most useful to a data provider thinking about making new kinds of data available in netCDF form. The document is less a recipe for success than it is a set of guidelines or tips that have evolved over the years. What this means for the end-user is that you can as easily jump into the "Strings and Variables" section as into the first section, "Conventions."

The document's usefulness applies both to new and seasoned users. While the long-term benefits may be less obvious to new users, early attention to the recommendations for representing data is an investment that will pay off when future users find unanticipated ways to access and make use of the data.

We invite you to peruse the document to see how you could integrate its suggestions into both new and existing netCDF files. If you encounter difficulties, have questions, or if you'd like to contribute your own ideas, you can do so by contacting support@unidata.ucar.edu .

As a de facto community standard netCDF's position may be enviable, but its growing use indicates a need to define a set of recommended practices so that users who desire to do so can share data and use the library in the most effective manner possible.

He writes: "I am delighted to welcome you to the web presence of the Unidata Program at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. The purpose of this page is twofold: first, I wish to introduce myself and to acquaint you with my background and research interests. But more importantly, I want to bring you up to date on the Unidata Program, which it is my privilege to serve as Director. The mission of our program is to provide data, tools, and community leadership for enhanced Earth-system science education..."

We hope you'll visit the director's home page to see the rest.

New Newsletter Feature The next issue of the E-letter, will introduce a new informal series written by Unidata community members. The new series, which will appear periodically, will feature guest editorials on topical issues contributed by knowledgeable colleagues in the community. The goal of this new segment is to exchange broadly thoughtful ideas on significant issues pertinent to the Unidata community and, more specifically, to serve as a vehicle for linking the expertise of UCAR and its member universities to the large community of Unidata users. A possible topic might be the kinds of cyberinfrastructure required for addressing events like Katrina, or, the data systems and tools required to study possible links between global warming and increased hurricane activity.We believe Unidata, and particularly the E-letter, can be an agent in achieving that goal.

We welcome your input as we plan the upcoming series, including your suggestions for editorial topics as well as nominations for contributing authors. Send suggestions to info@unidata.ucar.edu

UOP E-brochure In addition to Unidata presentations at the AGU, we'd also like to invite you to stop by the UCAR Office of Programs' booth to see the new electronic brochure. It highlights the programs and activities in UOP: COMET, COSMIC, DLESE, GLOBE, JOSS, NSDL, Unidata, and VSP. The brochure's title is UOP: Committed to the Advancement of Science, Education and Research--Innovative Partnerships and Services.

DeSouza Award Mark the date February 1 2006 on your calendars now. The Unidata Users Committee's DeSouza Award for 2006 will be awarded on that day at the AMS meeting in Atlanta prior to the commencement of the IPPS meeting. This will mark the sixth time the award has been made to a community member whose distinguished service has enlarged and enriched our community. Plan to be on hand to congratulate the 2006 recipient.