Data management mandates from federal funding agencies, professional societies, and publishers are becoming more common at all scales of research effort. To help researchers navigate the new requirements and implement effective, low-overhead data management workflows, Unidata is hosting an AMS Short Course on Data Management Planning and Implementation: Training on available open-source tools and services from the community and Unidata. The short course will be held the afternoon of Sunday, 10 January 2016, preceding the 96th AMS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The short course will provide information on the current mandates, present a researcher-focused approach to data management, and introduce freely available services and tools that can be combined to manage and share research data. The course is intended for practicing researchers who are interested in both meeting the current requirements and implementing “best practice” data management processes in their research effort. The course builds on and extends information available in Unidata's Data Management Resource Center.
Scott Jacobs of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) has been awarded the 2015 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.”
Jacobs is the IDP Onboarding Team Lead in the Production Management Branch (PMB) of NCEP Central Operations (NCO). PMB “serves as the technical transition between the research and development of all aspects of the NCEP's computing algorithms and their operational implementation. Production Management is responsible for final checkout of new applications software prior to operational implementation and its maintenance after implementation,” according to their web page. While Jacobs' duties at NCO currently encompass the release of the AWIPS II package, and specifically the National Centers Perspective, he has for many years been an important developer of the GEneral Meteorology PAcKage (GEMPAK) )and the associated National Centers NAWIPS software.
Note: The submission deadline for the Raskin Scholarship has been extended to October 15, 2015.
The Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) is an open networked community that brings together science, data and information technology practitioners around Earth science issues.
The Raskin Scholarship is open to a current graduate student in good standing at an institution affiliated with the ESIP Federation. To be considered for the scholarship, students must be studying an Earth science, computer science or closely related discipline and have an interest in fields related to current technical, scientific or applied activities of the ESIP Federation. The Scholarship will provide a $2000 stipend and travel support to the ESIP Federation bi-annual meetings. The Raskin Scholar will have an invited talk covering their field of interest at the ESIP Summer Meeting.
The Thriving Earth Exchange (TEX) is an activity sponsored by the Amercan Geophysical Union (AGU) with a focus on real-world environmental challenges that local communities face within three areas: natural hazards/disasters, natural resources, and climate change. TEX endeavors to build collaborative relationships between scientists and non-scientists and help them design and implement local solutions together.
TEX and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are collaborating to use cloud-computing and Earth and space science to advance solutions to community challenges related to natural resources, climate change and natural hazards. Together, they have issued “Sharing Solutions Challenge” with the title “Using Earth and space science and cloud computing to advance community solutions.” For this challenge, they are looking for projects that have working prototypes that address community challenges using Earth science data or tools. Winning projects will receive $15,000 in grant funds to use AWS on-demand cloud services, Free registration to attend the annual 2015 AGU Fall Meeting, and creative assistance and direction in developing videos that highlight the work.
Editor's Note: Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU) is one of a handful of universities of varying sizes that have incorporated AWIPS II into labs and classrooms in the past two years. MSU's experience shows that incorporating the new NWS technology into the educational mix is both possible and useful even for a small undergraduate program. This article outlines the MSU AWIPS II configuration and discusses some of the adjustments the program made to get the system running smoothly.
Thanks to a Unidata Community Equipment Award grant coupled with some local resources from our university, we (Professor Sam Ng and co-PI Chris Kimmett) at Metropolitan State University in Denver have been able to successfully bring the National Weather Service's AWIPS II forecasting system into the classroom. Professor Ng used AWIPS II alongside Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer as core tools in the Spring 2015 “Weather Analysis Techniques” course for undergraduate meteorology majors, and will continue using AWIPS II in the Fall semester and into the future.
As a part of its 2015 Outreach Program, UCAR's COMET Program has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for National Water Center (NWC) Cooperative and Partners Projects. Proposals can be submitted immediately, with a deadline of October 15, 2015 for NWC cooperative projects.
If you are upgrading from 14.2.1 to 14.4.1, it is required that you completely uninstall your 14.2.1 instance before installing 14.4.1, to ensure that all required packages are installed (there were some updates to package names and release numbers that may cause conflict on yum groupupdate).
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 six members of the Users committee and three members of the Strategic Advisory committee. New members and those finishing their terms will overlap for one meeting, which will take place at the end of September.
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.
The NetCDF-Java/Common Data Model (CDM) library and THREDDS Data Server (TDS) version 4.6.3 were released on August 31st, 2015. The development team recommends this upgrade for anyone using the CDM or TDS.
