Unidata McIDAS-X/-XCD v2019

October 1, 2019

Unidata McIDAS-X v2019 is a combination of SSEC McIDAS-X v2019.1 and XCD v2019.1, including additional bugfixes developed by the UPC, and various applications and enhancements from the UPC and others. The v2019 release of Unidata McIDAS-X is, in essence, a Unidata modified/updated version of SSEC McIDAS-X/-XCD 2019.1.

Unidata McIDAS-X v2019 Notes

• ADDE server support for GOES-16 ABI imagery delivered in the NOAAPort Satellite Broadcast Network (SBN) and relayed in the Unidata IDD NIMAGE feed named according to GOES-R ground system conventions was added to the core ABIN servers.
• ADDE definitions for GOES-16 imagery delivered in both the NOAAPort SBN and in the GOES ReBroadcast (GRB) can be found in the following McIDAS BATCH files in the $MCHOME/data (~mcidas/data) directory of the user mcidas:

  NPGOESRADDE.BAT - GOES-16/17 imagery distributed in NOAAPort
  GOESRADDE.BAT   - GOES-16/17 imagery delivered in GOES ReBroadcast (GRB)
  

SSEC McIDAS-X v2019.1 Notes (all apply to Unidata McIDAS v2019)

• Updated GOES-R Series ABI servers to store GOES-16 and -17 Temperature Data Quality Flag (TDQF) information and report the values in IMGLIST FORM=AUX output.

  The eight TDQF values below are listed, in order, in a single line of IMGLIST FORM=AUX output for each of the sixteen bands:

  • percent_focal_plane_temperature_threshold_exceeded_qf
  • maximum_focal_plane_temperature
  • focal_plane_temperature_threshold_increasing
  • focal_plane_temperature_threshold_decreasing
  • percent_good_pixel_qf
  • percent_conditionally_usable_pixel_qf
  • percent_out_of_range_pixel_qf
  • percent_no_value_pixel_qf
• Changed the naming format from G-* to GOES-* in the SATANNOT file descriptors for GOES-8 and later satellites. Also, GOES-8 and later entries that included “IMG” in the descriptor no longer include it; “SND”, if present, was retained; “PRD”, if present, was changed to “L2”. For example, “G-16 IMG” was changed to “GOES-16”, “G-17 IMG” was changed to “GOES-17”, “G-15 SND” was changed to “GOES-15 SND”, and “G-17 PRD” was changed to “GOES-17 L2”. Commands whose output is impacted by these changes include IMGLIST, IMGDISP, FRMLABEL, ZA, AXFORM and netCDF image files created by IMGCOPY, IMGFILT, IMGOPER or IMGREMAP. NOTE: Users who parse output from these commands need to be aware of, and possibly make changes to accommodate, the updated satellite names changes appearing in their output.
• Updated GOES-R Series ABI servers with additional bug fixes and enhancements. The changes include:
  • skipping past corrupted ABI files, so that IMGLIST and other commands will proceed to subsequent “good” files
  • removing restrictions on the names of directories containing the ABI files
  • adding support for serving ABI L2 image products that derive from NOAAPORT distributed image tiles
• Updated HimawariCast servers to support Himawari-9. The HimawariCast files do not distinguish between Himawari-8 and -9, so the server now treats them the same, and IMGLIST output and frame labels will give the generic label “HIM-CAST” (from Sensor Source number 289 in SATANNOT file).
• Updated VIIR servers with improvements and enhancements. The changes include increasing the number of files allowed in a dataset from 5,000 to 20,000 and removing the previous dataset descriptor naming requirements. The servers were also updated to use the SATANNOT file’s new sensor source numbers 320 (SNPP-SDR) and 321 (NOAA20-SDR). This means that commands that access these VIIRS datasets and include the satellite name in their output will change it from “NPP-VIIRS” or “NOAA-20” to “SNPP-SDR” or “NOAA20-SDR”, respectively. Commands whose output is impacted by this change include IMGLIST, IMGDISP, FRMLABEL, ZA, AXFORM and netCDF image files created by IMGCOPY, IMGFILT, IMGOPER or IMGREMAP. NOTE: Users who parse output from these commands need to be aware of, and possibly make changes to accommodate, the updated satellite names changes appearing in their output.
• Added DAY= and TIME= keywords to IMGPROBE command to allow use with archive or other servers that require DAY= to be specified. The D command (Alt-D) was also updated to include the day value from the frame directory in its request so that it also works with those servers.
• Added ‘‘ option to GLMDISP command’s LOC= keyword. This new option lets you specify the size of the location symbols that are plotted at each of the GLM observations.
• Updated FRMLABEL and ZA commands to include new (DAYJ) placeholder that plots the date in format dd mon ccyyddd, e.g., 12 OCT 2019285. Also updated FRMLABEL to identify RGB frames (displayed using the RGBDISP command) and thus apply an appropriate image label with no overlapping characters.
• Corrected a memory leak in the netCDF Point servers. This change allows commands like PTDISP and PTCON to work correctly when analyzing more than one million points in netCDF point files. (Note: The maximum number of points that can be analyzed is the value of MAXGRIDPT in gridparm.inc and mcidas.h. It is currently set to ten million.)
• Added new routine that, if necessary, replicates the first column of a global grid to improve GRDDISP contours near the grid boundaries. The new routine, m0fixglobalgrid, is based on the special code in GRDDISP that does the same replication task (so that the first and last grid columns are the same), which ensures the grid is continuous in the display and when using ijll/llij. The code was left in GRDDISP for cases where an old server (pre-2019.1) is accessed by a new client (2019.1 or later). The code is bypassed in GRDDISP when both the server and client are new.
• Added new satellite and band combinations that use the Expanded Stretch Feature, aka MCSTRETCH. The new combinations are Suomi NPP and NOAA-20 to -23 band 18 with SWIRCORE stretch table, and MODIS band 23 with SWIRCORE stretch table. See the Expanded Stretch Feature page or run McIDAS-X command SEE MCSTRETCH.TXT for more information about the feature and how it increases the detail shown in these and other imagery.
• Updated Meteosat navigation module, nvxmsgt.dlm, to use actual satellite longitude (rather than assuming it’s at 0 degrees) when computing satellite zenith angle.
• Updated data files CORE.SAT, SATANNOT and SATBAND to include sensor source numbers and band information for archive data for GMS-1, -2 and -3 satellites.
• Updated the station database (file STNDB.CORE) to include 556 new synoptic stations in Brazil from the Integrated Surface Database (ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/noaa/isd-history.txt).
• Updated USCOUNTY.MAP and USZONE.MAP files with the most recent National Weather Service GIS-AWIPS Shapefile database updates. The US*.MAP files are used by the WWDISP command and the MAP command’s COUNTY=, MARINE=, STATE= and ZONE= keywords.
• Updated MCTUNNEL command with new START option that starts a new tunnel, and modified to check for MCLOCALPORT environment variable that specifies the local port number to use.
• Updated McIDAS-XRD Package (a poriton of which is included in the McIDAS-X installation files) to include one new server (awp2aput, MSFC/SPoRT’s generalized AWIPS netCDF write server), one new command (SANDWICH, which creates the satellite sandwich product from visible and infrared images), and two new data files (OUTNWSCWA, a map file containing NWS CWA [County Warning Area] boundaries, and SANDWICH.ET, the standard enhancement file for the new SANDWICH command). Also updated the mod3adir and mod3aget servers to get the satellite number from the file name rather than the mask, and updated the McIDAS-XRD Python Package to work with both Python 2 and Python 3. See the McIDAS-XRD Instructions and Software page for the complete list of software included in McIDAS-XRD.

SSEC McIDAS-XCD v2019.1 Notes (all apply to Unidata McIDAS v2019)

• Updated TEMP SHIP data decoder and configuration files. Some issues were uncovered with the initial release of the TEMP SHIP decoder, including an adjustment to the wind speed calculations and error messages resulting from incorrect information contained in the ITSHPDEC.CFG file.
• Updated McIDAS-XCD code and configuration files to accommodate the updated McIDAS-X station database file STNDB.CORE that was released in McIDAS-X 2019.1. This includes a change to the maximum number of stations for surface METAR data increasing to 12500 from 10000.
• Updated PIREP data decoder to recognize CONS (continuous) and INTMT (intermittent) turbulence categories.

Unidata McIDAS-X/-XCD v2019 - Getting Help

Please send all questions/comments to Unidata McIDAS Support <support-mcidas@unidata.ucar.edu>.

Tom Yoksas
Unidata User Support