Hi everyone! I'm Jessica Blunt, an intern with Unidata. As you may have
heard, I've been working on a series of tutorial videos for the Integrated
Data Viewer (IDV).
The IDV is a powerful tool for students, researchers, teachers, operational
meteorologists, hobbyists... really anyone who wants to look at atmospheric
data or model output. It can be used to show the complexities of weather
systems in intuitive ways to promote instant insight and understanding in
classes, presentations, papers, and even your home office.
I was first introduced to the IDV in Fall of 2018. My Synoptic Meteorology
professor had asked groups of students for papers relating what we had
learned in class to past weather events. My group really wanted to include
an isentropic chart for our event, but couldn't find any for archived data.
Fortunately for me, a user had requested the ability to perform isentropic
analysis in January of that year and Unidata had finished its
implementation.
The IDV was very intimidating at first. I didn't understand the design,
didn't know how to open the user manual, and didn't have people to go to
for help (and forgot about Google in my panic). I also realized that it was
one of the best tools for atmospheric data visualization to be found. After
blundering around for a few days, I was able to produce my first figure.
After blundering around for a few months, I'm able to bring you this video
series.
Yuan Ho, the current developer of the IDV, has helped minimize this
blundering and suggested video topics that he thought you, the users, would
appreciate. We want your help picking topics for future videos. Any aspects
of the IDV that you don't understand, any figures that you can't figure out
how to create - just send us an email (support-idv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) or
leave us a comment. I would also truly appreciate any feedback you can
offer so that I can make each video more useful and comprehensible than the
last. A video will be released about once a week.
*Fun with Unidata's IDV* (
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQut5OXpV-0iL8prkqj_55jbZBdO6cWa6)
This sub-series covers miscellaneous topics and can be used as a sort of
quick-start guide. At least on "wow-factor" figure is created in each
video. The lessons are fast-paced and, in the future, will include
instructions on how to recreate the bundles used in Unidata's advertising.
There's no particular order to this sub-series - feel free to skip around!
Published Episodes:
*Creating the Hurricane Michael Bundle*
*Intro to Bundles*
*IDV Basics (*
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQut5OXpV-0hJEoY72aNWtgTmvcw3ZG6D)
This is the sub-series for the absolute beginner who wants to become a
proficient user. The first six episodes should be watched consecutively.
Published Episodes:
*Launching the IDV*
*Using the Dashboard*
*Using the Map View controls*
*The Time Driver*
*Window Types*
*Transects and Cross-sections*
*IDV Intermediate Topics (*
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQut5OXpV-0gdrSAYKEsJ6Hq04TPPtwTx)
These videos cover the details of specific functions of the IDV and is
intended for users who want to create more specialized figures.
Published Episodes:
*Bundle Choices*
*Isentropic Analysis - Vectors*
*Isentropic Analysis - Scalars*
*Isentropic Analysis - Cross-sections (coming soon)*
