Providing hands-on training in the use of scientific software is a key component of Unidata's service to the geoscience education and research community. Three members of the Unidata Program Center staff recently took part in teaching an American Meteorological Society Short Course on Python for Climate and Meteorology, held virtually over four half-day sessions March 2, 4, 9 & 11, 2021.

The National Science Foundation EarthCube initiative is a community-driven project aimed at creating an integrated environment for the sharing of geoscience data and knowledge in an open, transparent, and inclusive manner. EarthCube is offering students in the United States an opportunity to apply for awards of up to $2000 to develop Python-based Jupyter notebooks leveraging EarthCube tools. Applications are due by April 1, 2021.

Simplified data handling with xarray.

Version 1.0 of the MetPy collection of tools in Python for reading, visualizing, and performing calculations with weather data was released on December 22, 2020. MetPy provides tested, reusable Python components suitable to a wide array of tasks common in meteorological and atmospheric science applications, including scripted data visualization and analysis. In adding this functionality, MetPy aims to mesh well with the broader scientific Python ecosystem — widely used projects including Numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib, xarray, and others.

Version 1.0 of MetPy is now available. MetPy is a collection of tools in Python for reading, visualizing, and performing calculations with weather data. The project aims to mesh well with the rest of the scientific Python ecosystem, including the Numpy, Scipy, and Matplotlib projects, adding functionality specific to meteorology.

While MetPy has been around as an Open Source project since 2008, development resources have been limited, and version 1.0 is the first stable release. The word “stable” here does not imply that previous 0.x releases were not robust — MetPy has been in wide use for quite some time now — but rather that the development team has reached a stage where they are confident in promising to keep the software API stable until the next major release. This promise of API stability should give MetPy users confidence that the code they write using MetPy will continue to work unaltered for a significant period of time.

Students! Are you looking to make the transition to Python but unsure of where to start? Do you already know Python but want to see atmospheric science specific applications? Are you looking for data? If so, then please join us for a hands-on AMS Student Conference Python Workshop where beginners and experts alike will learn skills that enhance their ability to find, analyze, and explore data. All the workshop resources will be in the cloud, so no specialized local software installations are necessary. All you need is a laptop or tablet (a keyboard may be helpful) and a GitHub ID to participate.