According to Michelle Mainelli, NCEP Central Operations (NCO) Chief of Systems Integration Michelle Mainelli, Raytheon Technical Services has integrated the NCEP National Center Perspective into the AWIPS II Baseline release. Version OB11.5 of the software was officially released in May 2011.

"The OB11.5 version has been delivered and installed on NCEP's AWIPS II Test Bed for testing, and we expect to receive another update, OB11.6, by mid-June," says Mainelli. "NCO has dedicated significant time in testing and evaluating an automated flow of non-Satellite Broadcast Network (SBN) data into AWIPS II. Unfortunately, the current solution does not meet the timeliness requirements for gridded model data. NCO and the NWS/Office of Science and Technology have agreed to pursue a more direct connect approach to accessing data on the AWIPS II systems. We hope the new approach will help alleviate the data delivery timeliness issues we are currently experiencing."

In the month of April NCEP Central Operations (NCO) delivered an updated version of the AWIPS II National Center Perspective (NCP) and an initial version of NSHARP to both the NWS Office of Science and Technology and Raytheon Technical Services, reports NCO Chief of Systems Integration Michelle Mainelli.

"The NCP will be baselined in the primary AWIPS II software in May and released to test sites across the NWS by late May or early June," says Mainelli. "This version of the software will be the first release to include the full NAWIPS migrated code and functionality."

AWIPS II development and integration testing continued during March, according to Chief of Systems Integration Michelle Mainelli. NCEP Central Operations (NCO), with the assistance of Raytheon Technical Services (RTS), focused on integrating decoders and EDEX updates to the latest AWIPS II baseline code. "Our updates to the baseline are expected to be released to the National Weather Service by mid-April," says Mainelli. "We are anticipating the incorporation of the National Center Perspective to be baselined in May. Once that piece is merged, follow-on releases of the NAWIPS functionality in AWIPS II will be delivered by the AWIPS Program."

"Over the past few weeks, NCO has been focused on working with NWS Office of Science and Technology and RTS in establishing an automated data flow for non-SBN data into our NCEP Test Bed," Mainelli continues. "We are planning on completing a test of data synchronization with a limited set of data, and plan the complete addition of all data types available at the World Weather Building on the NCEP AWIPS II Test Bed by April 8."

The National Weather Services' NCEP Central Operations AWIPS II development team has begun Forecaster Integration Testing (FIT), according to Chief of Systems Integration Michelle Mainelli.

"The month of February was spent configuring the NCEP AWIP II Test Bed to begin Forecaster Integration Testing," says Mainelli. "During this past month, forecasters and developers from the National Hurricane Center, Storm Prediction Center, Aviation Weather Center, Climate Prediction Center, Ocean Prediction Center, Hydrometeorological Prediction Center, and NESDIS had an opportunity to spend two to three days testing the functionality, data display, and product generation on the system."

The month of January was extremely busy for the National Weather Services' NCEP Central Operations, according to Chief of Systems Integration Michelle Mainelli. Activities included finalizing the first version of the AWIPS II software, preparing AWIPS II workstations for demonstration at the American Meteorological Society meeting in Seattle, and finalizing the configuration of the AWIPS II test bed located at the World Weather Building in Camp Springs, MD.

"On January 12th, we submitted our AWIPS II baseline NCEP Perspective to the NWS Office of Science and Technology," says Mainelli. "We expect to see the NAWIPS migrated functionality in the AWIPS II release from Raytheon Technical Services by the end of March 2011. NCEP will continue to provide software updates to Unidata until that time."