Daryl Herzmann of Iowa State University has been awarded the 2016 Russell L. DeSouza Award by the Unidata Users committee. The DeSouza Award honors “individuals whose energy, expertise, and active involvement enable the Unidata Program to better serve the geosciences.”
Among other activities, Herzmann administers the Iowa Environmental Mesonet website (https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/), and provides a Local Data Manager (LDM) feed of the data to community members. He has been instrumental in mantaining a widely-used archive of case study data in GEMPAK and McIDAS AREA formats. In recent years, he has been an advocate for bringing Python-based workflows into the atmospheric science community; his presentation “Web Services & Python use for Meteorology” at the 2012 Unidata Users Workshop helped inspire efforts by Unidata Program Center developers to expand the use of Python in the community.
Larissa Gordon, who has been with us at the Unidata Program Center as a Communications Intern since March 14th, 2016, is reaching the end of her internship; her last day at the UPC will be September 30th. While Unidata has had student interns working on software development projects for several years, Larissa is our first Communications Intern. In that role, she has assisted with a variety of Unidata projects. Most notably, Larissa worked with Unidata community members to document the data management workflows they used in their research projects. Her efforts have greatly enhanced the “Scenarios and Use Cases” section of Unidata's Data Management Resource Center (DRMC).
We've been glad to have Larissa working with us over the course of her internship, and we wish her continued success in her endeavors!
Registration for Unidata's 2016 Software Training Workshop has been extended until October 5, 2016. The workshop features a session on using the Python programming language with Unidata technologies, Unidata's display and analysis packages IDV and AWIPS-II (with GEMPAK), as well as the Local Data Manager (LDM)
The workshop will be held October 17 – November 1, 2016. Individual courses last from one to three days.
Unidata's training workshops are developed and presented by the software developers and support staff for each package, so you can be sure to get your questions answered.
The Thredds Data server (TDS) was designed to operate in a client-server architecture. Recently, Unidata has moved TDS into the cloud using its existing architecture.
There seems to be agreement inside Unidata that we need to begin rethinking that architecture to adapt to the realities of the cloud.
A little known fact in the world of AWIPS(II) is just how dependent the system still is on NAWIPS-GEMPAK. The entire National Centers Perspective is dependent on pre-built shared object files for 64-bit Linux, which means that all of the D2D plugins which extend NSHARP (for bufr obs, NPP profiles, forecast models, etc.) also depend on these libraries.
This dependency has prevented use of the NSHARP plugin in the first release (15.1.1) of the OS X CAVE client. These are the steps taken to build NSHARP and GEMPAK libraries for OS X AWIPS 16.2.2.
One of the new data visualizations available in the upcoming AWIPS 16.2.2 release is a recreation of the legacy GEMPAK/NAWIPS colored temperature ('color_temp') bundle.
The Unidata Program Center's two summer student interns — Kristen Pozsonyi from Millersville University and Alex Haberlie from Northern Illinois University — have come to the end of their summer appointments. After a summer of dedicated work they presented the results of their projects to the UPC staff on July 29, 2016.
The Unidata Program Center is pleased to welcome new members to the program's governing committees. Committee members normally serve three-year terms; terms are finishing up for one member of the Users committee and two members of the Strategic Advisory committee. Additionally, a seat on the Strategic Advisory Committee that has been empty since the fall of 2014 is being filled. New members and those finishing their terms will overlap for one meeting: September 26-27 for the Users Committee and October 6-7 for the Strategic Advisory Committee.
The UPC staff looks forward to working with our new committee members, and to having all the current members of both committees at the Program Center in Boulder, Colorado this fall.
Slots are still available at Unidata's 2016 Software Training Workshop. The workshop features an exploration of Python in the context of Unidata technologies, courses on Unidata's display and analysis packages IDV and AWIPS-II (with GEMPAK), as well as courses on data access and management tools including the Local Data Manager (LDM) and the THREDDS Data Server (TDS).
The workshop will be held October 17 – November 1, 2016. Individual courses last from one to three days. Registration is open until September 19, 2016.
