Welcome back to AWIPS Tips! It has been a while since we have talked about the backend portion of AWIPS – EDEX. For a brief introduction, please check out this previous entry of AWIPS Tips about EDEX. Today we are going to cover the important topic of data retention. Being mindful about data retention is important, because data can take up a significant amount of space on your server. Sometimes, that is what is expected and desired – in the case of having a long archive (longer than 5 days perhaps). But, if we're unprepared for the amount of data that will be kept, it can end up causing all kinds of problems that can be hard to track down, and the root of the cause is your machine is running out of disk space.

Version 5.0.6 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.

The NCO project is coordinated by Professor Charlie Zender of the Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine. More information about the project, along with binary and source downloads, are available on the SourceForge project page.

From the release message:

Version 5.0.6 brings a few bug-fixes that only affect ncremap and ncclimo users. Others can skip 5.0.6.

Additional details are available in the ChangeLog.

Welcome back to AWIPS Tips! This week we are putting a spotlight on Learn AWIPS CAVE, which has moved to Unidata's new eLearning hub, Unidata eLearning. When you create an account with Unidata eLearning, your progress through Learn AWIPS CAVE is saved to your account so you can easily pick up where you left off. Upon completion of all lessons, you will also be awarded a badge on your profile.

To start the course, first go to the Unidata eLearning home page and create a new account. Once your account is created, you will be able to self enroll in Learn AWIPS CAVE, take the questionnaire, and begin learning!

Version 5.0.5 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.

The NCO project is coordinated by Professor Charlie Zender of the Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine. More information about the project, along with binary and source downloads, are available on the SourceForge project page.

Version 1.2.0 of MetPy, a collection of tools in Python for reading, visualizing, and performing calculations with weather data, has been released. 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. This release includes a variety of new features and enhancements, as well a variety of fixes for issues encountered by users.