In case you missed it — here's a recap of news from the Unidata Program Center for the month of October, 2015.
Scott Jacobs Receives 2015 DeSouza Award
Scott Jacobs of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) has been awarded the 2015 Russell L. DeSouza Award by the Unidata Users committee. The DeSouza Award honors “individuals whose energy, expertise, and active involvement enable the Unidata Program to better serve the geosciences.�
AMS Short Course on Data Management
Data management mandates from federal funding agencies, professional societies, and publishers are becoming more common at all scales of research effort. To help researchers navigate the new requirements and implement effective, low-overhead data management workflows, Unidata is hosting an AMS Short Course on Data Management Planning and Implementation: Training on available open-source tools and services from the community and Unidata. The short course will be held the afternoon of Sunday, 10 January 2016, preceding the 96th AMS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Call for Partners: Unidata Pilot Project to Implement Data Management Processes
The Unidata Program Center (UPC) is searching for atmospheric science researchers or research groups to participate in a pilot project aimed at designing and implementing robust data management workflows. The project aims to assist at least three community partners representing modest research projects of different scales in the implementation of data management processes that satisfy National Science Foundation and other federal funding agency requirements.
NetCDF operators (NCO) version 4.5.3
Version 4.5.3 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.
NEXRAD Archive data available on Amazon S3
The Big Data Project (BDP) is an initiative undertaken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to increase public availability of large volumes of environmental data collected and generated by the agency. As part of the Big Data Project, Unidata is working in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) on a demonstration project to provide access to a more than twenty years of archived NEXRAD Level II radar data — augmented continuously with new, real-time data — stored in Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) environment. In addition to assisting AWS with ingesting new data flowing from the NEXRAD sites, Unidata Program Center staff have set up a THREDDS Data Server in the AWS environment to provide services allowing community access to the stored data.
AWIPS II CAVE for Mac OS X
Unidata has made available a version of AWIPS II CAVE for Mac OS X. This OS X release is based on JogAmp 2 (rather than JOGL 1), and provides the D2D, Hydro, MPE, and Localization perspectives. This release does not include the National Centers Perspective (NCP), the Graphical Forecast Editor (GFE) perspective, or any Nsharp-based upper-air sounding plugins (all of which are available in the 64-bit Linux release).
Roland Stull Meteorology Text Available to Use at No Charge
Dr. Roland Stull, professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia's Vancouver campus and author of several widely-respected meteorology textbooks, has made the contents of his book Meteorology for Scientists and Engineers (3rd Edition) available to the public at no charge. Alongside this 2011 edition he is making available a slightly revised version, completed in 2015, retitled Practical Meteorology.
On the Developer's Blog
Unidata Program Center developers write regularly on technical topics on the Unidata Developer's Blog. Most recently, developer Michael James describes using MRMS (Multi-Radar/Multi-Sensor) products available as grids in the latest release of the AWIPS II package.
Governing Committee News
Unidata's Users Committee met 30 September - 2 October, 2015, in Boulder, Colorado. The meeting summary is available here. The next meeting will be held 11-12 April, 2016 in Boulder, CO.
Unidata's Strategic Advisory Committee (formerly the Policy Committee) met 30 September - 2 October, 2015, in Boulder, Colorado. The meeting summary is available here. The next meeting held 7-8 April, 2016 at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg.
