McIDAS, ldm-mcidas, Satellite Data Ingest

Status Report: March 2012 - September 2012

Tom Yoksas

Strategic Focus Areas

McIDAS activities support the following Unidata funding proposal focus areas:

1. Enable widespread, efficient access to geoscience data
   McIDAS remains the application of choice for the satellite meteorology community.
   The Advanced Data Distribution Environment (ADDE) componet of McIDAS was the first application offered by Unidata to provide remote, programmatic access to a wide variety of data that is important to the atmospheric science community.
2. Develop and provide open-source tools for effective use of geoscience data The fifth generation of McIDAS, McIDAS-V, unlike its predecessors, is a fully open source application that is is in wide scale and growing use in the satellite meteorology community.
   McIDAS ADDE continues to evolve and provide access to increasing volumes of image and non-image data.
3. Provide cyberinfrastructure leadership in data discovery, access, and use
   Concepts articulated in ADDE inspired the development of THREDDS (to address the lack of rich metadata available in ADDE) and RAMADDA. ADDE remains one of the most used data services in the Unidata suite serving over 3 TB per month.
4. Build, support, and advocate for the diverse geoscience community
   McIDAS is sought for use by those interested in satellite meteorology worldwide.

McIDAS Activities Since the Last Status Report

NEXRAD Level III Dual Polarization Products

Finalized work with SSEC MUG team to standardize enhancements for NEXRAD Level III Dual Polarization products.

 

Unidata McIDAS v2009l

Unidata McIDAS version 2009l includes all SSEC version 2012.1 and Unidata updates and bugfixes. Changes to Unidata McIDAS continue to be made through an addendum process. The current release, v2009l, reflects 12 updates since McIDAS v2009 was first made available in late July, 2009. v2009m, which incorportates Unidata and SSEC bugfixes and enhancements for NOAAPort GINI image serving, should be released by the end of September.

 

Interest in McIDAS by Non-core Users

The UPC continues to receive requests for McIDAS from international university users and U.S. government agencies and other non-traditional Unidata users (e.g., private businesses, etc.). Government agencies and non-traditional Unidata users are referred to UW/SSEC for access to McIDAS; international educational community user requests are granted on a case-by-case basis after they provide a clear statement of their acceptance of the terms of use provided by SSEC.

 

McIDAS-V

The UPC (Yoksas) continues to participate in the McIDAS Advisory Committee (MAC). The MAC was assembled by UW/SSEC to advise SSEC on McIDAS-X users needs/concerns/desires for development in the next generation McIDAS, McIDAS-V. The MAC was modeled after the Unidata IDV Steering Committee.

ldm-mcidas Activities Since the Last Status Report

Development

A new release, v2012, is being prepared for a September release. The new release addresses building on newer OS versions.

 

Satellite Data Ingest

GOES-East, GOES-West, GOES-South

Unidata continues to ingest GOES-East, GOES-West, and GOES-South (GOES-South America) imager data at the UCAR campus in Boulder.

• Direct, programmatic access to real-time GOES-South (GOES-12) data via McIDAS ADDE has been used by over 820 users in 33 countries who downloaded approx. 520 GB of data per month over the past year.
• Direct, programmatic access to real-time GOES-East (GOES-13) data via McIDAS ADDE has been used by approx. 35 users who downloaded an average of approx. 1 TB of data per month over the past year.
• Direct, programmatic access to real-time GOES-West (GOES-11) data via McIDAS ADDE is used by approx. 25 users have downloaded an average of 800 GB of data per month for the past year.