In case you missed it — here's a recap of news from the Unidata Program Center for the month of November, 2013.
Using METOC Geospatial Intelligence in anti-Piracy Operations
Although piracy has been around since nations have engaged in maritime trade, the scale and focus of attacks in and around the Horn of Africa has attracted significant attention over the past few years. The extent of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and waters adjacent to Somalia led to the formation of Combined Task Force 151 (CTF151) to conduct anti-piracy operations. As part of their task force activities, the Royal Australian Navy's Hydrography and METOC branch began to analyze whether any weather-dependent patterns could be identified in the timing and distribution of piracy attacks.
Unidata Policy Committee now Strategic Advisory Committee
Unidata's Policy Committee — one of the program's two governing committees — has chosen to change its name. After a vote at the October 2013 committee meeting, committee members voted to change the name to the Unidata Strategic Advisory Committee.
NetCDF operators (NCO) version 4.3.8
Version 4.3.8 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.
RAMADDA 1.5 Available
The RAMADDA development team is pleased to announce the release of RAMADDA 1.5. The Repository for Archiving, Managing and Accessing Diverse Data (RAMADDA) is an Open Source information management and data repository framework for the geosciences that provides a turnkey system enabling data providers and users to upload, manage, and share data holdings.
New IDV Tutorial Videos: the Mapes IDV Collection
Three new IDV tutorials created by Dr. Brian Mapes of the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (RSMAS) are available on Unidata's YouTube channel. The new tutorials introduce the Mapes IDV Collection, which is a curated compilation of IDV bundles and "templates" delivered in the form of an IDV plugin. Dr. Mapes is building the Collection to bring together and provide easy access to some interesting datasets and displays that he uses in his own research and teaching.
Unidata Staff at AGU Fall 2013 Meeting
Members of the Unidata Program Center staff will be attending the American Geophysical Union 2013 Fall meeting, December 9-13 2013, in San Francisco. The schedule below lists specific sessions at which UPC staff will be in attendance. See the AGU Fall meeting Scientific Program for additional information on the sessions.
NetCDF-Java library and TDS version 4.3.20
The NetCDF-Java/Common Data Model (CDM) library and THREDDS Data Server (TDS) version 4.3.20 were released on November 26, 2013. The development team recommends this upgrade for anyone using the CDM or TDS.
New 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.
Unidata's Strategic Advisory Committee (formerly the Policy Committee) met October 10-11, 2013. The meeting summary is available here.
