In case you missed it — here's a recap of news from the Unidata Program Center for the month of February, 2020.
Upcoming deadlines to be aware of:
| 6 March | Registration closes for the one day Unidata Users Workshop at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. |
| 20 March | Nominations for the 2020 Russell L. DeSouza Award are due. |
| 20 March | Proposals for the 2020 Unidata Community Equipment Awards are due. |
Highlights from last month:
IDV 5.7
IDV version 5.7 was released on 5 February 2020.
Unidata Community Survey
As a community-governed program, Unidata depends on guidance and feedback from educators, researchers, and students in the atmospheric and related sciences. The 2020 Unidata Community Survey sought your feedback the range of data analysis and visualization software packages maintained and supported by Unidata staff. The survey closed on 19 February 2020.
2020 Unidata Users Workshops
The Unidata Users Committee is organizing a series of regional workshops designed to follow the 2018 Unidata Users Workshop Reducing Time to Science: Evolving Workflows for Geoscience Research and Education. These follow-on workshops will explore tools to access data and strategies for teaching computational concepts. Each one-day workshop will bring together geoscience educators, pedagogical experts, and Unidata staff to discuss and share best practices for helping students engage in data-enabled science.
Note: Registration is closed for the OU workshop, but still open for the UNCC workshop until 6 March 2020.
Unidata Science Gateway JupyterHubs are Helping U.S. Naval Academy Faculty Learn Python
Faculty members in the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA) Oceanography Department are embarking upon a new voyage: to learn Python. The USNA Oceanography Department has traditionally used Matlab as the primary tool to analyze and visualize geosciences data. To build on that coding success and align with the efforts of the geosciences community, at the start of the spring 2020 semester, Associate Professor Bradford Barrett and Instructor Alexander Davies organized a “Python Book Club” in which faculty members meet once or twice a month to collaboratively learn Python.
NetCDF operators (NCO) version 4.9.2
Version 4.9.2 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.
What's New in IDV 5.7
The Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) version 5.7 is now available. This release features enhanced color tables, support for NWS Hazard Warning KML files, enhanced support for vertical profiles, and several new formulas. In addition, the release includes updates to existing features and incorporates the latest netCDF-Java library.
ESIP: Raskin Scholarship
The ESIP Raskin Scholarship is open to graduate students, post-docs, and early career (less than five years post graduation) scientists in Earth science, computer science, or a closely related discipline. Preference is given to applicants who can demonstrate a connection to ESIP-related activities. The scholarship seeks to promote collaboration, research support, and exposure for talented students and early career researchers in the Earth or computer sciences.
On the Developer's Blog
Unidata Program Center developers write regularly on technical topics on the Unidata Developer's Blog. The ongoing MetPy Mondays looks at adding altimeter readings and sky cover observations to surface plots, smoothing and plotting data, adding legends and subplots, and creating custom colormaps.
Governing Committee News
Unidata's Users Committee met 1-2 October 2019 in Boulder, CO (in a joint meeting with the Strategic Advisory Committee). The meeting summary is available here. The next meeting is scheduled for 2-3 April 2020 in Boulder, CO.
Unidata's Strategic Advisory Committee met 2-3 October 2019 in Boulder, CO (in a joint meeting with the Users Committee). The meeting summary is available here. The next meeting will be a held 20-21 April 2020 at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
