The 2019 Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) National Diversity in STEM Conference was held October 31 - November 2 in Honolulu, Hawai'i. This is the largest multidisciplinary and multicultural STEM diversity event in the country, and Unidata was fortunate to be able to send staff member Jeff Weber to attend. Jeff was able to make valuable connections for Unidata and for the UCAR Community Programs (UCP) in general.

For more than 30 years, meteorology students, researchers, and operational practitioners have used the GEMPAK (GEneral Meteorology PAcKage) software package for data analysis and visualization of a diverse set of atmospheric science datasets. Initially developed in the late 1980s to produce forecast and analysis graphics for the National Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction, GEMPAK has been superseded by more modern software in operational settings, and has not been actively developed by the Weather Service since 2008. Within the education and research community, however, GEMPAK’s potent combination of powerful analysis and visualization tools, ease of use, and low cost (it’s free) has led to its continued use, despite its age.

Unidata’s MetPy project aims to help the academic community modernize its software toolset by bringing the best features of GEMPAK into the burgeoning world of scientific Python.