Unidata's AMS booth

This year's annual American Meteorological Society meeting, was held January 6-10 in Phoenix, Arizona. While we missed interacting with those in our community who could not attend due to the shutdown of the Federal government, we were happy to see many others participating in the meeting and at our booth in the exhibit hall. As always, we were also glad to meet so many prospective community members at the AMS Student Conference.

With so much going on at the conference, we can't cover everything here. Instead, we present some highlights as recalled by UPC staff members who attended.

MetPy 0.10.0 has been released. New features of the 0.10 series include simplified plotting, unit support in xarray selection, and updates for several calculations. For full release notes see the GitHub Release Page.

Members of the Unidata Program Center staff will be attending the 99th annual American Meteorology Society meeting, 6-10 January 2019 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Unidata will be in Booth 416 in the exhibit hall; feel free to stop by to talk with us. The booth will feature live, hands-on demonstrations of Unidata software and services, including a look at the current state of the AWIPS, IDV, MetPy, and THREDDS Data Server packages. Come and talk with the developers about what's coming up and what you'd like to see.

Read on for a schedule that lists selected sessions at which Unidata staff (and summer interns) will be presenting or attending. Unidata will also be at table C-8 at the Student Conference Career Fair, on Saturday and Sunday evenings.

A map discussion with visuals courtesy of Python.

The meteorology curriculum at Valparaiso University (VU) is continuously evolving as new technology arises, and this includes Python. Python is becoming a staple in many VU meteorology courses, where an ever-increasing number of packages and libraries are in use. Adding a new programming language to the educational mix can create a steep learning curve for college students who lack a programming background, but we feel that an early introduction to Python helps to prepare students for immersion into the job market or further education in graduate school.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) WMO Global Campus is the collaborative network of WMO Member institutions and National Meteorological Hydrological Services involved in the development and delivery of education and training. Its goal is to address the evolving global priorities for learning. It is the fruit of the synergies, sharing and cooperation within this community of institutions. In keeping with the concept of a WMO Global Campus as a community of practice, WMO is initiating the publication of a volume of short papers describing case studies of innovations implemented by partners in the Education and Training Programme (ETRP).