In case you missed it — here's a recap of news from the Unidata Program Center for the month of June, 2019.
Upcoming deadlines to be aware of:
| 7 July | Nominations for Unidata Users Committee and Strategic Advisory Committee |
| 31 July | Abstracts for the AGU 2019 Fall Meeting are due. |
| 1 August | Abstracts for the AMS 2020 Annual Meeting are due. |
Highlights from last month:
LDM data feeds, THREDDS server now available from UW-Madison AOS Department
The Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin has been helping to make weather data available to the Unidata community since the early days of the IDD project. An upgraded ingest and relay cluster, made possible by funding from the 2018 Unidata Equipment Awards grant program, has now enabled UW-AOS to serve the GOES16 and GOES17 data along with everything else to additional downstream sites.
Welcome Summer Intern Aodhan Sweeney
Aodhan Sweeney joined the Unidata Program Center as a software development summer intern on May 20, 2019. Aodhan graduated from Florida State University in May 2019 with a bachelor's degree in Physics; he will be starting a Ph.D. program in Atmospheric Science at the University of Washington in the fall.
Welcome Summer Intern Jessica Blunt
Jessica Blunt joined the Unidata Program Center as a software development summer intern on May 20, 2019. Jessica is currently an undergraduate Meteorology student with minor concentrations in Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma; she'll be graduating in December of 2019.
Welcome Summer Intern Max Grover
Max Grover joined the Unidata Program Center as a software development summer intern on May 20, 2019. Max graduated with Bachelor of Science degree from Valparaiso University in May 2019, and will be attending the University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign in the fall to study for a Master’s Degree in Atmospheric Science.
Unidata Committee Nominations: Deadline Extended
The deadline for nominations for Unidata committee appointments beginning in the fall of 2019 has been extended until July 7, 2019.
NetCDF and Native Cloud Storage Access via Zarr
The Unidata netCDF development team is happy to announce that we are expanding the storage solutions available through the netCDF software libraries, with the Zarr object model and storage format currently under development.
Service Update: Changes to the IDD NIMAGE Datastream
The Unidata Program Center has altered the IDD NIMAGE datastream to contain all of the GOES-16 and GOES-17 Level 2 image products that were previously being being sent in the IDD NOTHER and HDS datastreams.
Unidata Funding Proposal Approved by National Science Foundation
The Unidata Program receives the majority of its funding from the National Science Foundation. Every five years, the program submits a new proposal to the NSF, outlining past accomplishments and describing plans for future activities. The most recent proposal, titled Unidata: Next-generation Data Services and Workflows to Advance Geoscience Research and Education, was awarded by NSF with an official start date of May 1, 2019.
What's New in IDV 5.6
The Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) version 5.6 is now available. This is a major release with new features including an isentropic advection derived parameter, a 3D streamline display, new display types for the 3D grid tracer display, and a chooser for Geostationary Lightning Mapper data from ADDE servers. In addition, the release includes updates to existing features and incorporates the latest netCDF-Java library.
Abstract Deadlines for AMS, AGU Meetings
The 100th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting in will be held 12–16 January 2020 in Boston, MA. The submission deadline for abstracts is 1 August 2019.
The American Geophysical Union continues to celebrate its centennial as well. The 2019 Fall Meeting in will be held 9-13 December 2019 in San Francisco, CA. The submission deadline for abstracts is 31 July 2019.
On the Developer's Blog
Unidata Program Center developers write regularly on technical topics on the Unidata Developer's Blog. The ongoing MetPy Mondays series looked at ways to speed up batch processing, create useful logs, how to parse multiple files automatically, and provided a primer on named tuples.
Also: If you're a MetPy user, please take 5-10 minutes to complete the MetPy User Survey!
Governing Committee News
Unidata's Users Committee met 21-22 March 2019, in Boulder, Colorado. The next meeting will be a joint meeting with the Strategic Advisory Committee held 1-3 October 2019 in Boulder, CO.
Unidata's Strategic Advisory Committee met 16-17 April 2019 in at Pensylvania State University in State College, PA. The next meeting will be a joint meeting with the Users Committee held 1-3 October 2019 in Boulder, CO.
