The Seventh Symposium on Advances in Modeling and Analysis Using Python, sponsored by the American Meteorological Society, and organized by the AMS Board on Environmental Information Processing Technologies, will be held 22–26 January 2017, as part of the 97th AMS Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington. Preliminary programs, registration, hotel, and general information will be posted on the AMS Web site in late-September 2016.

Abstract submissions for the Python Symposium should be submitted via the AMS web site by 3 August 2016.

The Unidata Program Center is hiring! We are looking for a scientific Python developer to join our team in creating and maintaining software and data services to support the geosciences.

As part of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, CO, Unidata offers competitive salaries and great benefits. UCAR was selected as one of the Best Companies to Work For in Colorado. Simply put, Unidata is a great place to work. Unidata's team environment provides high levels of autonomy and responsibility with great opportunity to excel individually and contribute to the team's success.

CAPE plot from Millersville PECAN data.

In the summer of 2015, from June 1st to July 15th, a fleet of scientists set out each evening in the Midwest. Their goal? To gain insight on the nocturnal mesoscale convective storms (MCS's) that plague America's heartland. While MCS's are necessary for irrigation and the replenishing of aquifers, often these storms can become vicious; especially at night when they are least detected.

With the implementation of the field experiment PECAN (Plains Elevated Convection at Night) scientists from eight research laboratories and fourteen Universities including Millersville University of Pennsylvania hope to gain insight to better predict these nocturnal storms. After the data were collected, the Unidata Program Center (UPC) worked closely with Millersville students and academic staff to help standardize their PECAN study data.

Earlier this year, the Unidata Users Committee asked members of the Unidata community to participate in a survey regarding their use of scientific software packages, software training, and community services, and to favor us with their insights into possible future directions for the program. You can read an overview of the survey results in 2016 Community Survey Results.

While Unidata's governing committees and the Unidata Program Center staff will continue to analyze the survey comments in the process of crafting Unidata's next Strategic Plan, individual Program Center development groups are also using the survey as input into their own development plans. This series of articles provides responses from different development groups to comments or concerns raised by the survey. Under review in this article: Python activities at Unidata.

Unidata is pleased to announce the availability of the Python Data Access Framework (DAF). The DAF provides access to an AWIPS II Environmental Data EXchange (EDEX) server directly from Python code. Created by Unidata Program Center software engineer Michael James, the DAF strengthens Unidata's AWIPS II offerings by making it easier to retrieve data from the AWIPS II data storage system from outside the Common AWIPS Visualization Environment (CAVE).

Users have always been able to request real time NCEP/NWS weather data using AWIPS II, but now, with the addition of the Python DAF, users can request this data using only simple python commands.