Unidata summer 2014 interns Shawn Cheeks and Florita Rodriguez.
The Unidata Program Center is happy to be hosting two student interns this summer: Florita Rodriguez from Texas A&M Univeristy in College Station, TX, and Shawn Cheeks from Marshall University in Huntington, WV.
The Unidata Summer Internships offer undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to work with Unidata software engineers and scientists on projects drawn from a wide variety of areas in the atmospheric and computational sciences.
On Friday and Saturday, April 18-19, 2014, the University of Miami hosted a Unidata Regional Workshop on the use of Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer (IDV); the open source Repository for Archiving, Managing, and Accessing Diverse DAta (RAMADDA); and data and tools available from Unidata.
The 21 workshop attendees included students and scientists from the University of Miami, the Florida Institute of Technology, the University of South Florida, and Duke University. While most of those attending were focused on meteorology or atmospheric and ocean science, the group included a conservation biologist studying geotagged Sooty Tern seabirds. Many attendees brought data sets used in their own research, which enhanced the workshop experience greatly.
Shortly after 0 UTC (18:00 MDT) on Saturday, March 21, 2014, the contents of the Internet Data Distribution FNEXRAD (NEXRAD Level III national composites) and UNIWISC (aka McIDAS Satellite Imagery Sectors) datastreams were updated with new products. Prior to the update, the FNEXRAD products were created on motherlode.ucar.edu and the UNIWISC products were created on unidata2.ssec.wisc.edu. Both datastreams are now being created in a 64-bit CentOS 6.5 Virtual Machine in the Amazon EC2 cloud.
Read on for a brief overview of the contents of each datastream with special emphasis on new or altered products.
After receiving clarification from the National Science Foundation, the Unidata Program Center has cancelled its plans to move its operations to the town of St. Cloud, Minnesota.
"We were a bit puzzled when we heard that the NSF wanted Unidata to focus its energies on moving to St. Cloud," says Unidata Program Director Mohan Ramamurthy. "Frankly, we were a bit worried about losing the high-speed Internet2 connectivity we enjoy at UCAR, but NSF is our primary sponsor, so we went along with it. And the proximity to St. Cloud State University would certainly be an asset to us."
This year's annual American Meteorological Society meeting in Atlanta, Georgia hosted nearly 3500 attendees, who fortuitously missed the serious winter storms that occurred shortly before and after the conference. We were happy to see many of the Unidata community members participating in the meeting at our booth in the exhibit hall, and 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.
Unidata offers equipment grants to support a variety of projects
The Unidata Program Center is pleased to announce the opening of the 2014 Unidata Community Equipment Awards solicitation. Created under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, Unidata equipment awards are intended to encourage new members from diverse disciplinary backgrounds in the geosciences to join the Unidata community, and to encourage existing members to continue their active participation, enhancing the community process. For 2013, a total of $100,000 is available for awards; proposals for amounts up to $20,000 will be considered.
The Unidata Program receives the majority of its funding from the National Science Foundation. Every five years, the program submits a new proposal to the NSF, outlining past accomplishments and describing plans for future activities. We recently received word from the NSF that Unidata's most recent five-year proposal had been accepted and funded.
While much of the work proposed involves the continuation and extension of existing programs, projects, and services, the proposal does chart a new direction for the program; namely the provision of data and services through the "cloud" mechanisms that are becoming ubiquitous.
The American Geophysical Union is developing the Thriving Earth Exchange to connect communities, scientists, and funders (or Seekers, Solvers, and Sponsors in the language of the Exchange) and bring Earth and Space science to bear on local challenges.
Program Director Raj Pandya explains the Thriving Earth Exchange this way: "Communities post their challenges; scientists suggest solutions; judges select the best solutions; the scientists get a financial reward; and the scientists, communities, and sponsors have the chance to work together to implement those solutions."
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 two members of the Users committee and three members of the Policy committee. We'll also be welcoming a new Graduate Student representative and a new representative from NASA. New members and those finishing their terms will overlap for one meeting, which will take place in October 2013.
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 for the October meetings.
Between September 12-15, 2013, Colorado's front range experienced a weather event that caused some of the worst flooding in the region's history. More than 17 inches of rain fell in Boulder over the course of the storm; the average annual precipitation in the city is roughly 20 inches.
Communities along the front range, in the mountains to the west, and on the plains to the east are busy responding to the event. Numerous mountain roads were washed away by the floodwaters, leaving residents stranded; airlift operations are still underway to bring people to safety. Twelve helicopters from the National Guard and Red Cross are using Boulder's Municipal Airport (located very near the Unidata Program Center office) as a base for the largest aerial rescue effort in the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
