Unidata Policy Committee Meeting Summary

14-15 May 2013
NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction
College Park, Maryland

 

Members Attending Steven Businger (Chair), Univ of Hawaii Dave Dempsey, San Francisco State Univ Kevin Kloesel, Univ of Oklahoma Kersten Lehnert, Columbia Univ Lynn McMurdie, Univ of Washington Users Committee Representative Kevin Tyle Users Committee Chair Agency Representatives Bernard Grant, NSF Leroy Spayd, NOAA/NWS Remote Participation Bill Gallus, Iowa State Rob Fovell, UCLA Peter Griffith, NASA agency representative UCAR Representatives Greg Byrd, COMET

Visitors Ben Kyger, NCEP Michelle Mainelli, NCEP Matt Rosencrans, NOAA/NCEP Dave Plummer, NCEP Scott Jacobs, NCEP Rich Jeffries, COMET Jeff de La Beaujardiere, NOAA Eva Zanzerkia, NSF UPC Staff Attending Ethan Davis Ben Domenico Ginger Emery Michael James Linda Miller Terry Mitchell Mohan Ramamurthy

14 May 2013

Administrative Items

Next meeting-10-11 October 2013

Discussion of action items

Ethan Davis discussed RAMADDA-like capabilities. He has been exploring this topic and will continue to see if there are other considerations or technologies Unidata should be following.

Long tail data — Mohan has been talking to various individual PIs within NCAR and UCAR.  The proposal mentions Unidata playing a greater role and enabling PIs publishing of data from research, i.e. field campaign, etc. We must keep in mind that UPC is not an archive center.

MAP list - OU students providing individual web sites which creates a problem — others cannot find the web site where student published the data. MAP list is housed at University of Albany.

Kevin Tyle (Univ. at Albany, SUNY) - Users Committee Report

The UPC has reserved the week of 21 June 2015 at Center Green for the next Triennial Users workshop. A separate funding request is needed to NSF for the workshop.

A short workshop survey pertaining to the 2012 summer workshop will be developed and circulated sometime during summer 2013. Kevin will work with Doug Dirks on this action.

Mohan indicated that due to some surplus money from the 2012 workshop award, coordination of a small group to discuss post-workshop items is being considered.

Discussion on AWIPS II: installations are ongoing with Texas A&M, Florida Institute of Technology, Univ of Albany, Iowa State, and Penn State. Beta sites have been chosen, based on equipment awards and time required to participate. UPC is trying to collect input from the beta testers to improve the procedures and make necessary changes as needed.

HRRR Data testing is taking place at UPC.

Marty Baxter gave a presentation at the Users Committee meeting on his experiences creating case studies using IDV and RAMADDA.

Mohan Ramamurthy (Unidata) - Director's Report

• Mohan is hoping to send the 2018 proposal to NSF before Memorial Day. Although a page extension was requested for 30 pages, it was denied. An extension to 25 pages was approved and will be submitted. Mohan asked the committee to assist with prioritization of items for the proposal (see proposal development slide).
• Rosetta is growing in importance-oceanography, marine science, JPL, NASA, - It was suggested that the name "Rosetta" be used, rather than the Greek symbol. See White Paper for additional information.
• OGC standards-cf-netCDF data model extension became an OGC standard.
• AWIPS II training took place in Boulder. Three instructors from the Kansas City Training Center provided the training to five UPC staff (Michael James, Jeff Weber, Mike Schmidt, Steve Emmerson and Tom Yoksas, and two COMET staff. (See the photo...)
• The Unidata community composition has changed and is growing considerably. see slide 15 for detailed information.
• 2,518 edu's world wide!
• EarthCube- Unidata has been involved in collaborative projects, organizing a seminar, and partnering in several Eager-projects.
• An IT survey was conducted; 33 people responded. See slide 20 for the results.
• The UPC also surveyed 21 universities to see how they were using Unidata software and data services. Slide 21 indicates findings.
• Over the past 10 years, Unidata has awarded 64 equipment awards to community members, amounting to $1M for universities. This year there were 12 proposals submitted. Six proposals have been recommended for approval. The awards should be made over the next month (May-June).

Peter Griffith (NASA) - NASA Report

Peter gave a remote presentation. NOAA climate people to have a mini-workshop on carbon cycle science-NASA update-Earth Science Line on President's budget-NASA-slightly up from 2012.  Less impact on NASA than other agencies.

AboVE project science definition team-write a concise experimental plan-how vulnerable and resilient are ecosystems and society to environmental change in Arctic and Boreal regions. Concern with data management-using RAMADDA, but so far it is working fine. Jeff McWhirter is working half-time for the NASA AboVE project.

Terry Mitchell (Unidata) - Budget presentation

Attrition played a big part of the budget for this current award period. With labor costs and the associated overhead accounting for 85% of the total budget, the long stretch of vacant positions in FY12 & FY13, although a strain on the program, has allowed us to build up a reserve, and has helped us with another year of level funding and an increase in both the benefit and indirect rates for FY13. Along with new funds for the second year of the OPULS project and the third year of funding on A-CADIS, we were able to leverage our surplus of funds to continue two term positions and fill another vacant position. Over the period of performance for the Unidata 2013 proposal, we've maintained a balanced budget in the core which has positioned us well to face a potentially challenging award period starting in FY14. Although we're in better financial shape than a lot of other UCP programs, we're still hoping for a modest CODB increase in the core for FY14 in anticipation of another increase in both the benefits and indirect rates for the new fiscal year. As always, we are continuing our efforts to increase non core funding with more proposal submissions and white papers to various funding opportunities. We will continue to leverage our resources with new projects and funding as appropriate to weather these challenging economic times. The financial outlook for FY14 and beyond is uncertain, but with the surplus created over the current award period, we're in a good financial position to meet the goals in the current 2013 proposal as we plan ahead for the new 2018 proposal.

Bernard Grant (NSF) - NSF report

• 2013 Geosciences does not have their budget yet.  8% spending now
• AGS- 8.5% in NSF research program for 2013, due to sequestration
• SEES has 16 solicitations, but they want to have fewer
• supporting Wyoming super computer
• ICER investments-Earth System Dynamics, EarthCube (CIF21)
• CAUSE (Catalyzing Advances in Undergraduate STEM Education
• PLR-Blue Ribbon Panel
• CISE – Cliff Jacobs will be working part-time (one-day per week) with EarthCube in CISE.
• CIF21 continues to partner with CISE on EarthCube to create an integrated data management infrastructure across geosciences.
• Bernard indicated that the budget for Unidata FY14-a cut for next year -- level for Unidata (proposal cannot be pie in the sky)- cannot change scope of work to affect the budget so much that it is not workable within constraints of the funding
• Unidata must set priorities.
• Departing from NSF:
  Anna Ganeet
  Sylvia Edgerton, ATM-CHEM rotator-
  Anna Gannett-ATM-DYN Aeronomy
  Brad Smull-leaving to return to Univ of Washington
  Michael Morgan-will leave June 2014
• Roger Wakimoto is working toward a strategic plan for each division at NSF..

Leroy Spayd (NOAA) - NOAA report

• Leroy began by saying that NWS has the worst budget in 30-40 years. The Director and CFO were essentially fired. There were 17 funding lines-moving money around. Sequestration compounded an already dire situation within NWS.
• Greg Byrd will work with UPC on AWIPS II algorithm development - COMET's proposal to NOAA is to validate thermodynamic calculations on AWIPS II software with AWIPS 1 and GEMPAK. WFO Boulder will also be involved in this effort.
• Hurricane research, WRF
• Cloud research-weather and climate services to the community

Ben Kyger, Director of Operations (NCEP) - NCEP Key Program Status

• Transition continues from AWIPS I to AWIPS II. This has been ongoing for six years. The current contract expires in two years.
• Sandy Supplemental
  current status - 80 teraflops on computer
  end state 2015
• HRRR operationally next spring-
• Phase 2 (2 petaflops) end state 2018 ($25 million)
  same as ECMWF
  hurricane-all sky satellite radiances
  mesoscale ensemble-cores are going from 3 to 2
  hourly HRRR to 3 km to 18 hr

Many lessons learned-should have spent more time on requirements.

Michelle Mainelli (NCEP) - CONDUIT and AWIPS II

• CONDUIT is serving approximately 60 GB of data per day. There have been no changes to the CONDUIT content in the last 12 months.
• NCEP Central Operations will take over the NCEP-related web pages from NOAA's web operations center by the end of this calendar year.
• The current infrastructure cannot handle more data due to the limited LDM queue size. New data can be added in January and June 2014.
• NWS National Deployment will be restarting in Q3FY13 with completion being Q4FY15.
• Question of use of cloud for AWIPS - this is not a requirement at this time.
• Question of NOMADS-web operations center-GFS - NOMADS focuses on operational datasets (7 days of archived data).
• Display solar imagery June 6th.
• To answer the question of what happens if the contract is incomplete. If contract is not met by Raytheon, users will need to roll back. Raytheon is required to address problems as they occur.
• Thin Client - The FAA command center access data available – view on laptop-can run thin client, but it's currently slow.
• Space weather will be done-they have contracted for assisstance and will get their needs fulfilled.

Michael James (Unidata) - AWIPS II

• AWIPS II release will consist of one tarball with a quick install guide. Some installation instructions with more detail have been completed. Currently we have 5 beta sites, and we are requesting feedback from the sites- so far, the comments are more positive than previous. The installations are going more smoothly. Michael needs to put the release date on the web site.
• Unidata is planning availability of AWIPS II in Nov 2013-Redhat 6 13.6 version - we need to define capabilities so the community knows what they're getting, and what to expect.

Eva Zanzerkia (NSF) - EarthCube

The EarthCube vision is to

• Transform the conduct of geosciences research with the next generation CI
• Create effective community-driven CI
• Enable global data discovery within the geosciences
• Achieve interoperability and data integration across disciplines.

EarthCube strategy includes building on existing resources. EarthCube is iterative with community input and assessment every year. Main emphasis is to engage all stakeholders in the process.

Proposal comments from committee

Priorities:

• There is no list of priorities or resources 
• some things will go to maintenance role
• should be able to take advantage of low hanging fruit
• core values – keep in mind
• priorities are always flexible and subject to change—dependent on evolving technology, etc

Committee-asked Mohan to get back to them with a draft list of priorities prior to submitting the proposal. 

64% of those responding to the survey do IT support
79% using LDM for data

NWS funding for AWIPS II as users and co-developers-to be used by universities – open source development

Security issues will need to be considered

15 May 2013

Tour of Center for Weather and Climate Prediction

The tour was great and the building is not your typical Federal building. Very nice, indeed! The committee appreciates the work and coordination done by Michelle Mainelli for this meeting. Excellent job!

Jeff de La Beaujardiere (NOAA) - Data Management

• Jeff wants data to be available to all and is working toward that goal.
• EDM Virtual Workshop-thinking-June 25-27, 2013.
• DOI assigned to each type of data, i.e., particular data set, not one per time the data set is available.
• Many questions and comments about servers and tools.
• Easy ID—GOES-R funding for this - Jeff is doing research to see what method is best.
• Investigating Cloud services-Data Center cloud
  There is a question of ongoing costs
  Apparently products like Amazon Glacier are $30K/year for 30TB of data

 

The meeting adjourned at 11:45 a.m.

 

Linda Miller - lmiller@unidata.ucar.edu
Community Services, Unidata
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
P.O. Box 3000
Boulder, CO 80307-3000
303-497-8646 fax: 303-497-8690