McIDAS, ldm-mcidas, GOES Ingest and NOAAPort Status Report
Summer 2007

Tom Yoksas
July 2, 2007

Executive Overview

• Unidata McIDAS-X v2007 is being readied for release in the latter part of July, 2007
• ldm-mcidas v2006/7 release waiting on USPLN Lightning data action
• Unidata-ingested GOES-10 imagery has been included in Unidata-Wisconsin GOES-East composite image sectors since January 31, 2007
• Unidata NOAAPORT ingest package continues as a reliable source for IDD HDS, IDS|DDPLUS, NGRID, NIMAGE, and NNEXRAD data

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Vision

Efforts referenced within this report are based on five of the six endeavors articulated in the Unidata 2008 Proposal:

• Endeavor 1: Responding to a broader and more diverse community
• Endeavor 2: Comprehensive Support Services
• Endeavor 4: Software to analyze and visualize geoscience data
• Endeavor 5: Distributed, organized collections of digital material
• Endeavor 6: Improved data access infrastructure

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Unidata McIDAS-X, -XCD (Yoksas)

• McIDAS-X/-XCD version 2007 were released by SSEC on 25 May 2007, and 04 June 2007, respectively. The Unidata McIDAS-X v2007 release is being readied for release in the third week of July, 2007.
  • The most significant new feature of v2007 is the support of NCEP-created GRIB/GRIB2 fields in the GRIB ADDE server.

  • ADT was added by SSEC to v2007. ADT Estimates tropical cyclone intensity using the Advanced Dvorak Technique>

• McIDAS v2007 training workshop will be held on August 7-10, 2007 in UPC offices in Boulder.

• Version 2006 released on August 4, 2006. As of March 25, 2007 50 sites downloaded Unidata McIDAS 2006. For a historical comparison, 102 sites downloaded version 2004 and approx. 60 downloaded v2005.

  The majority of new interest in Unidata McIDAS is coming from sites outside of the US.

• eight bugfix/enhancement updates have been released for v2006.

• Direct access of PNG-compressed AREA format images in the IDD UNIWISC (Unidata-Wisconsin) and GINI format Nexrad composites in the IDD FNEXRAD datastreams was added in addendum v2006f.

• Highlights of the v2006 release include:
  • A new command, IMGRBG was added to McIDAS-X. IMGRGB combines images and basemaps into a multi-banded RGB image.

  • WWDISP was modified to correctly plot severe thunderstorm and tornado watch boxes. WWDISP in versions prior to 2006 will not plot the boxes because of a February 2006 change to the National Weather Service product headers.

  • GRDLIST output was modified because another space was required in the LEVEL field. To accommodate the extra space there while keeping the overall output width to 80 characters or less, the DAY, TIME and SRC fields were moved one space to the right, and the FHOUR field was reduced by one character.

  • The remote ADDE server installation script was removed from the Windows XP distribution.

  • A major change for the Unidata v2006 MCGUI is the reformulation of the image display definition file ADDEIMAGE.CORE. In an effort to make ADDEIMAGE.CORE (and ADDEIMAGE.SITE and ADDEIMAGE.USER) entries easier to create/modify, the format of the file has been completely changed. v2005 versions of ADDEIMAGE.(CORE|SITE|USER) are incompatible with MCGUI v2006. If you created any of these files, you need to move them out of your MCPATH directories before attempting to run MCGUI v2006.

  • A GRIB ADDE server is now available in v2006. One may continue to serve McIDAS GRID files as always, but may want to switch to the new GRIB server for faster data transfers and less disk space usage. The real-time GRIB server utilizes a MySQL database. Only GRIB files from the NOAAPORT data stream have been tested and are fully supported.

• continuing support/bug fixes for Unidata and SSEC McIDAS-X, -XCD.

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ldm-mcidas Decoders (Yoksas)

• A new, as yet unreleased, version, v2006, includes support for decoding of USPLN lightning data that could be made available from Embry Riddle University (active). Release of the new version awaits User Committee decisions on provision of USPLN data to Unidata community

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GOES Ingest Capabilities (Yoksas, Schmidt)

• During the Fall 2006 Policy Committee meeting, a response to the call for internal proposals for the UOP Director's STORM fund was developed. The proposal, representing a collaboration among Unidata, and NCAR's Earth Observing and Research Applications Laboratories, requested funding for the following activities:
  • Purchase of equipment needed to ingest satellite imagery from the GOES-10 spacecraft using an existing satellite dish installed at the Mesa Lab
  • Purchase of new equipment, and upgrades to leverage existing equipment to ingest GOES-East/West imagery using the satellite dishes installed at FL-2
  • Provision of real-time, programmatic access to the data ingested from all three GOES platforms using Unidata THREDDS technologies

  In October, 2006, UCAR submitted this proposal to NESDIS which funded it for the full requested amount of $30K.

  On the evening of January 30, Unidata successfully began ingesting GOES-10 (referred to internally as GOES-South) imagery using equipment that had been surplussed by various groups in NCAR/UCAR and the Unidata community (e.g., retired USAN satellite dish from NCAR/CISL; TeraScan (tm) satellite receiver (SeaSpace Inc.) from NCAR/RAL; PC satellite ingest card from the Weather Underground, Inc., etc.), and McIDAS SDI software licensed from the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  On Wednesday, January 31 GOES-South imager sectors were integrated into the Unidata-Wisconsin datastream (IDD feedtype UNIWISC) for the benefit of the US and increasingly international Unidata community, especially university participants in Latin America. Any system participating in the IDD has access to the data (currently over 400 systems at over 210 sites). GOES-South imagery is now accessible to any ADDE-enabled application (e.g., McIDAS, IDV, etc.) with Internet access.

  The establishment of GOES-10 ingest capabilities in UCAR was a large portion of Rick Anthes President's Corner article in the March 2007 UCAR newsletter.

  SDI interface cards donated to the UPC by the LSU/SRCC and St. Louis University will be used to establish a GOES-East and GOES-West ingest and ADDE serving capability in UCAR and as spare parts (active, Schmidt, Yoksas).

  Activities:

  March-May, 2007:

  • recertify the satellite dish de-ice subsystem (done)
  • advertise the availability via McIDAS ADDE of real-time GOES-South data to the Unidata community (done)
  • tap signal and data off of existing NCAR/RAL TeraScan GOES-East and GOES West reception systems (using equipment surplussed by UCAR/JOSS; LSU/SRCC; and St. Louis University), and ingest the data directly into formats that can be accessed by McIDAS ADDE (GOES-East ingest began on June 22; GOES-West ingest awaits equipment purchase)
  • incorporate real-time GOES-South, GOES-East, and GOES-West data into THREDDS and ADDE server installations on motherlode.ucar.edu (in progress)
  • work with NCAR/EOL to make the GOES-South data available in TeraScan TD format (upcoming)

  Spring-Summer, 2007:

  • archive GOES-South, GOES-East, and GOES-West data on the NCAR MassStore (upcoming)
  • motorize GOES-South ingest dish to track GOES-10 as its orbit degrades (upcoming)

  Full resolution GOES-East/West imagery is also available via ADDE from a Unidata-owned, toplevel IDD relay node housed in the SSEC Data Center. This same machine hosts a rolling multi-month, realtime archive of images broadcast in the IDD Unidata-Wisconsin datastream.

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NOAAPort Ingest (Chiswell, Schmidt, Emmerson, Yoksas, Weber)

• The Unidata-developed DVB-S NOAAPORT ingest system has been in use at the UPC and several (7) Unidata sites since the NWS transition to DVB-S broadcast. At least 4 non-Unidata sites are know to be using the ingest system, but we don't spend effort tracking use.

  SSEC provides and supports the Unidata DVB-S NOAAPORT ingest system for its licensed users of McIDAS-XCD. We occasionally get support questions on the NOAAPORT ingest software package, but the support burden caused by the inquiries is minimal.

  The NOAAPORT ingest system installed at the Universidad de Costa Rica in San Jose, Costa Rica continues to function as designed. Problems, however, regularly occur as oxidation builds up in a N-connector coupling that was added by the company that re-aimed the satellite for NOAAPORT use. After the oxidation is removed by UCR personnel, data ingestion returns to normal.

  This NOAAPORT reception system installation is a high profile undertaking at the UCR, so its continued success remains important for Unidata. (Yoksas)

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by Tom Yoksas.