Unidata offers equipment grants to support a variety of projects

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to announce the opening of the 2012 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 2012, a total of $100,000 is available for awards; proposals for amounts up to $20,000 will be considered.

Three members of the Unidata Program Center staff attended the EarthCube charrette held in Washington D.C. on November 1-4, 2011. Read on for Development and Outreach Manager Ben Domenico's impressions.

Developers of Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) traveled to the University of Wisconsin, Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) in late November to meet with developers of SSEC's Man-computer Interactive Data Access System Fifth Generation (McIDAS-V) package. Discussion during the meeting focused on ways the two teams can collaborate more closely and avoid duplicating development effort.

Three members of the Unidata Program Center staff attended the EarthCube charrette held in Washington D.C. on November 1-4, 2011. Read on for netCDF developer Russ Rew's thoughts on the meeting.

Three members of the Unidata Program Center staff attended the EarthCube charrette held in Washington D.C. on November 1-4, 2011. Read on for Unidata Program Director Mohan Ramamurthy's summary of the meeting.

Joint meeting of Unidata Users and Policy committees

Members of Unidata's two governing committees gathered in Boulder in late October 2011 for a joint meeting to share information and ideas between the committees and with Unidata Program Center staff.

Dr. Peter Griffith is a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the coordinator of the North American Carbon Program, and NASA's representative to Unidata's Policy committee. He created the educational video The Carbon Crisis in 90 Seconds, and shared it with Unidata committee members and staff at this week's joint User's and Policy committee meeting.

The National Science Foundation's EarthCube project continues to gain momentum, with nearly 500 participants engaging in lively electronic discussion on the EarthCube community web site.

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to welcome six new members to our governing committees. Committee members normally serve three-year terms; these terms are finishing up for four members of the Users committee and two members of the Policy committee. New members and those finishing their terms will overlap for one meeting, which will take place in mid-October, 2011.

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 meeting.

The following provides a brief introduction to the scientists joining Unidata's committees. You can additional information about the governing committees, including contact information for committee members, on the Governing Committees page.

ISU student Ryan Lueck uses the IDV to display data from ISU's THREDDS server.

The Iowa State University Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences maintains an extensive archive of meteorological data, including textual information (severe weather statements and other National Weather Service products), numerical model output in gempak format, gif images of weather maps created daily since 2006, and gempak-format surface and upper air data going back to 1933, much of which was provided to us by NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory. For the past year or two, we have made NMQ estimates of precipitation available on the archive as well.