In case you missed it — here's a recap of news from the NSF Unidata Program Center for the month of April, 2024.
Upcoming deadlines to be aware of:
| 3 May | Nominations for the 2024 Russell L. DeSouza Award are due. |
| 2 August | Nominations for the NSF Unidata Governing Committee membership are due. |
Highlights from last month:
NSF Unidata 2024 Community Equipment Awards: Deadline Extended until April 12
The NSF Unidata Users Committee decided to extend the deadline for the 2024
Equipment Awards solicitation until April 12, 2024.
SSEC Unidata Server Shutting Down in April 2024
The NSF Unidata server hosted at the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (unidata3.ssec.wisc.edu) was permanently decomissioned on April 26, 2024.
MetPy 1.6.2 Released
MetPy 1.6.2 was released, fixing a few issues identified in version 1.6.1.
2024 MetPy Users Survey
The MetPy development team is looking for anyone who has used MetPy to take the 2024 MetPy Users Survey. The survey should only take approximately 5-10 minutes and is completely anonymous.
AWIPS Tips: Upcoming CentOS7 End of Life
CentOS7 is the operating system that is currently supported with our production version of AWIPS (v20.3.2). Currently, we offer installations of CAVE on multiple operating systems including CentOS7, MacOS, and Windows, but EDEX is only supported on CentOS7. However, the end of life (EOL) for CentOS7 (and RHEL7) is quickly approaching, with the official end date of June 30th, 2024.
NetCDF operators (NCO) version 5.2.3
Version 5.2.3 of the netCDF Operators (NCO) has been released. NCO is an Open Source package that consists of a dozen standalone, command-line programs that take netCDF files as input, then operate (e.g., derive new data, average, print, hyperslab, manipulate metadata) and output the results to screen or files in text, binary, or netCDF formats.
NetCDF operators (NCO) version 5.2.4
Version 5.2.4 of the netCDF Operators (NCO) has been released. NCO is an Open Source package that consists of a dozen standalone, command-line programs that take netCDF files as input, then operate (e.g., derive new data, average, print, hyperslab, manipulate metadata) and output the results to screen or files in text, binary, or netCDF formats.
AWIPS Tips: Using the Text Workstation
This week we look at how to display a variety of text products generated by Warning Forecast Offices and are available in our AWIPS database. This functionality is new for our release of CAVE and did not previously work in version 18.
Why is the Keras 3 Release a Big Deal for the Deep Learning Community?
The Keras package is an open-source library that provides a Python interface for deep learning. Keras is intended to be a user-friendly, modular, and extensible way to enable fast experimentation with deep neural networks. With Keras version 3, however, the package provides APIs for using three backends: TensorFlow, JAX, and PyTorch.
On the Developer's Blog
NSF Unidata Program Center developers write regularly on technical topics on the Unidata Developer's Blog. The ongoing MetPy Mondays series discusses logical and bitwise operators, and understanding atmospheric scale height with Python and MetPy.
Governing Committee News
NSF Unidata's Users Committee met November 1-3, 2023 in a joint meeting with the Strategic Advisory Committee at the Unidata Program Center in Boulder, CO. The Users Committee will meet next May 13-14, 2024 in Boulder, CO.
NSF Unidata's Strategic Advisory Committee met November 1-3, 2023 in a joint meeting with the Users Committee at the Unidata Program Center in Boulder, CO. The Strategic Advisory Committee will meet next May 2-3, 2023 in Washington, DC.
