In case you missed it — here's a recap of news from the Unidata Program Center for the month of February, 2014.
Important: Unidata Website Security Breach on February 20th
Unidata's web server was exploited through a vulnerability in a cgi-bin script on February 20, 2014. The intrusion was detected and the vulerability removed, but community user information was accessed by the hacker(s), including website account email addresses and their associated passwords in encrypted form.
Although the password information gained by the intruders was encrypted, we must assume that they are in the process of combing through this information and will attempt to crack and use passwords found.
We have no evidence so far that the password encryption has been broken, but it is prudent to assume that it could be. If you use the same e-mail address and password combination for multiple accounts including Unidata's website, we STRONGLY recommend that you change your password for those other accounts immediately if you have not already done so. Unidata website passwords have been reset; our website's login page will walk you through the process of providing a new password.
We apologize for this security breach and stand ready to help you in any way that we can. Steps have been taken to prevent similar intrusions in the future.
We now return you to your regular monthly news summary…
GEMPAK7 Release
GEMPAK7 is now available from Unidata. 32- and 64-bit Linux
binary RPM packages are available, as are binary tarballs
for x86 Solaris and OS X 10.9 Mavericks.
World Weather Open Science Conference
The first World Weather Open Science Conference (WWOSC 2014 — The weather: what's the outlook?) will be held in Montréal, Canada, from 16-21 August 2014. The conference hopes “to bring together the entire weather science and user communities for the first time to review the state-of-the-art and map out the scientific frontiers for the next decade and more.”
Unidata Program Center Welcomes Ryan May
Ryan May joined the Unidata Program Center software development staff on January 6th, 2013. He comes to Unidata from the University of Oklahoma, where he completed his bachelor's and master's degrees in Meteorology, and where he'll be finishing up his doctoral dissertation “sometime later this year.”
AMS 2014 Conference Highlights from the Unidata Staff
This year's annual American Meteorological Society meeting in Atlanta, Georgia hosted nearly 3500 attendees, who fortuitously missed the serious winter storms that occurred shortly before and after the conference. We were happy to see many of the Unidata community members participating in the meeting at our booth in the exhibit hall, and to meet so many prospective community members at the AMS Student Conference.
NetCDF operators (NCO) version 4.4.2
Version 4.4.2 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.
Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, April 2014
The 2014 annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers will be held from April 8 to April 12, 2014 in Tampa, Florida. The meeting brings together geographers, GIS specialists, weather and climate scientists, and other leaders for the latest in research and applications in geography, sustainability, and GIScience. The meeting will feature over 4,500 presentations, posters, workshops, and field trips by leading scholars, experts, and researchers.
Unidata Regional IDV Workshop at the University of Miami
The University of Miami is pleased to sponsor and host a Unidata Regional Workshop on Friday and Saturday, April 18-19, 2014. Unidata Program Center staff will provide introductory and advanced training in the use of Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer (IDV), Repository for Archiving, Managing and Accessing Diverse Data (RAMADDA), and other Unidata data and tools.
On the Developer's Blog
Unidata Program Center developers write regularly on technical topics on the Unidata Developer's Blog. Recent articles touch on using GEMPAK to create a region of interest mask, dimension scales in netCDF 4, and accessing netCDF data via coordinate systems.
Governing Committee News
Unidata's Users Committee met October 3-4, 2013. The meeting summary is available here. The next meeting will be March 31 - April 1, 2014.
Unidata's Strategic Advisory Committee (formerly the Policy Committee) met October 10-11, 2013. The meeting summary is available here. The next meeting will be May 20-21, 2014.
