[netcdfgroup] netCDF Operators NCO version 5.0.5 are cartwheeling towards you...

• To: NCO Announce Mail List <nco-announce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, netCDF Mail List <netcdfgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: [netcdfgroup] netCDF Operators NCO version 5.0.5 are cartwheeling towards you...
• From: Charlie Zender <zender@xxxxxxx>
• Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2022 10:47:25 -0800

netCDF Operators NCO version 5.0.5 are cartwheeling towards you.

http://nco.sf.net (Homepage, Mailing lists, Help)
http://github.com/nco (Source Code, Issues, Releases, Developers)

What's new?
Version 5.0.5 brings a new lossy quantization codec, BitRound.
Granular BitGroom has been renamed Granular BitRound.
ncclimo has improved API consistency between climo generation and
timeseries extraction. ncatted introduces a new editing mode:
prepending. If these issues do not interest you, you might skip
5.0.5.

Work on NCO 5.0.6 has commenced and will improve ncremap support
for mbtempest, incorporate new mbtempest improvements, and further
improve support for quantization/compression algorithms.

Enjoy,
Charlie

NEW FEATURES (full details always in ChangeLog):

A. Arithmetic operators now support the lossy quantization algorithm
known as BitRound. The BitRound algorithm is described in "A note on
precision-preserving compression of scientific data" by R. Kouznetsov,
doi:10.5194/gmd-14-377-2021. BitRound has been used to quantize more
accurately in NCO's BitGroom and GranularBR algorithms for over a
year. However, though algorithms select the number of bits to quantize
internally. Now BitRound is an independently configurable algorithm in
its own right. It takes a user-specified number of significant bits
(NSB, or "keepbits) to retain. The NSB argument contrasts with the
number of significant digits (NSD) parameter expected by BitGroom,
DigitRound, and GranularBR. BitRound is Bit-Adjustment-Algorithm #8.

ncks --baa=8 --ppc default=9 in.nc out.nc # BitRound NSB=9
ncks --baa=4 --ppc default=3 in.nc out.nc # GranularBR NSD=3

Thanks to Milan Klower and R. Kouznetsov for prototyping BitRound in
the first place.

B. ncclimo now accepts filenames from stdin or positional arguments
in monthly climo mode. Previously, ncclimo self-generated input
filenames for monthly climos, given the caseid, and start/end years.
Now ncclimo can be fed a list of filenames to climatologize.
The API is identical to providing filenames to the splitter:
pipe filenames through stdin or place them on the command-line.
This makes the climo generator even more flexible than the splitter
which cannot (yet) generate filenames internally. However, the
flexibility of providing filenames via stdin or positional arguments
is more error-prone than using internally generated filenames that
are, by construction, guaranteed to be in the correct sequence.
User-provided filenames are vetted en masse to ensure that the
expected number of files for the specified climatology are present.
They are not vetted to ensure that they are in the correct order,
i.e., January then February then March of the correct year etc.
The $caseid argument is optional when the user provides the files.
However, ncclimo needs to know what to name the output files.
The $caseid argument or the $fml_nm argument, when present, provides
the output filename stub. When neither of these options are present
ncclimo will name the output files after the model name, if known.

ls mpaso*.nc | ncclimo -P mpaso -s 50 -e 100 -o out # Stdin
ls eam*h0*.nc | ncclimo --fml=name -s 50 -e 100 -o out # Stdin
ncclimo -P mpaso -s 50 -e 100 -o out mpaso*.nc # Positional
ncclimo --fml=name -s 50 -e 100 -o out eam*h0*.nc # Positional

http://nco.sf.net/nco.html#ncclimo

C. ncatted has a new edit mode: Prepend. Analogous to append mode,
prepend mode will prepend the user-specified value to the attribute
and if the attribute does not exist it will be created:

ncatted -a char_att,att_var,p,c,"this is prepended.\n" in.nc out.nc

http://nco.sf.net/nco.html#att_prepend

BUG FIXES:

A. ncclimo 5.0.4 inadvertently broke automatic filename generation for
MPAS. The workaround is to pipe the input filenames through stdin or
supply them on the command-line. The solution is to upgrade. Thanks to
Xylar Asay-Davis for reporting this issue.

B. ncclimo 5.0.4 always prepending the CWD of the operator to the
input file location in climo mode. This prevented ncclimo from working
correctly with stdin filenames that included an absolute path.
The workaround is to run ncclimo from the input file directory.
The solution is to upgrade. Thanks again to Xylar Asay-Davis for
reporting this issue.

C. ncatted had a longstanding bug triggered when using modify mode to
try to change the value of the _FillValue attribute in a netCDF4 file
when the attribute did not already exist. Talk about a corner case!
The solution is to upgrade.

Full release statement at http://nco.sf.net/ANNOUNCE
--
Charlie Zender, Earth System Sci. & Computer Sci.
University of California, Irvine 949-891-2429 )'(