The National Centers for Environmental Prediction have begun providing Fire Weather output from selected areas of the North American Mesoscale (NAM) model via Unidata's CONDUIT feed. The additional data were added into the CONDUIT feed on September 20, 2011.

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.

The National Science Foundation is seeking to facilitate the conduct of geosciences research by supporting community-based cyberinfrastructure in an effort called EarthCube. The project is a joint effort between the NSF Geosciences Directorate and Office of Cyberinfrastructure, and seeks to greatly increase the productivity and capability of researchers and educators working at the frontiers of Earth system science.

The project team has set up an EarthCube community web site at http://earthcube.ning.com/. The goal is to create a forum that enables broad participation from the geosciences community and to solicit comments and white paper submissions to the EarthCube project.

RAMADDA version 1.3 is now available. The new version has a number of new features, including:

• Google Earth plugin integration and improved maps
• NLAS/RAMADDA LiDAR data services
• Lots of bug fixes and documentation
• New and improved Wiki facilites
• Page styles
• A number of new plugins

Modelling radiation stress on marine corals.

Researchers from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia; the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York; the department of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) at the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands; and the University of Warwick in Coventry, United Kingdom are using the IDV to help analyze environmental stresses on marine corals. The stress factors include high temperatures, ultra-violet radiation, weather systems, sedimentation, as well as stress-reducing factors such as temperature variability and tidal dynamics. Their paper Global Gradients of Coral Exposure to Environmental Stresses and Implications for Local Management, was published in the online journal PLoS One and has been featured in other scientific magazines including Nature.