GEMPAK 5.6.K release
Release engineering of GEMPAK 5.6.K is now underway. New capabilities have been added to GEMPAK grid programs in support of accessing large grids including the National Digital Forecast Data Base (NDFD) 5 KM grids.
The maximum grid size that can be stored in a GEMPAK file may now be larger than the maximum number of grid points used for calculation and display purposes. To access grid files with grids larger than the maximum display limit, the grid must be subset to not exceed LLMXGD grid points. The subset can be specified using an area (GAREA) or by specifying points using a new GEMPAK parameter IJSKIP which specifies the number of points to skip in each direction and/or the beginning and ending grid point number in each direction. In addition, if the parameter is set to "YES", then it will automatically calculate the optimum skip factors to display the maximum number of grid points for the geographic region defined by the GAREA parameter. Look for the GEMPAK help on IJSKIP for additional details when available.
See the new feature summary for a description of included changes.
GEMPAK Training Workshop to be held October 27-29, 2003
The GEMPAK traning workshop dates have been set for October 27-29, 2003 and will be held in the UCAR Corporate Training Center in the new Center Green complex. The past several workshops have been conducted during summer months, and we hope that the fall dates available for this year's workshops will appeal to users that are not able to attend durning the summer. We expect the 2004 workshop to be held in August.
GEMPAK 5.6.J released March 31, 2003
GEMPAK versions 5.6.I and 5.6.J were combined into a single UPC release. This release supports the FreeBSD operating system. Additionally, the release has been ported to Mac OSX (Darwin using openMotif), though this operating system does not yet provide the message queue funtionality required for command line GEMPAK programs (GUIs and decoders have been tested). When message queue support is integrated into Darwin (stubs are already present), GEMPAK should be fully functional. See the new feature summary for more information on updated features in this release.
GEMPAK web portal transition
Online user registration/download available through Unidata portal site. Migration of GEMPAK web pages from the old web server to the new web server is in progress.
GEMPAK 5.6.G & GEMPAK 5.6.H Releases
GEMPAK 5.6.H was released to the Unidata community on September 16, 2002. Due to the time necessary to prepare and conduct the GEMPAK user training workshop at the end of July, the releases of 5.6.G and 5.6.H were combined into a single release to the Unidata community.
This is the first version of GEMPAK to support 16/24 bit displays, meaning that sites are no longer limited to running their X server with a default visual in 8 bit pseudocolor mode.
NEXRAD composites are being created and inserted into FNEXRAD datastream
National and Regional radar composites are being created using GDRADR and inserted into the FNEXRAD data stream as GRIB products. The regional composite is designed to be relocatable floater as weather conditions warrant. GRIB products are used so that the products are independent of the display package. The grid products are most flexible for use in computations with other data fields such as RUC temperature grids as shown in the preciptation type mosaic. The mosiac product is approximately 80 Kbytes in GRIB format.
A high resolution 1km mosaic is also being created as a 4800x3000 point GINI format image. The image can be compressed to about 1 Mbyte for transmission in the FNEXRAD datastream and can be easily subsetted by an ADDE server. Uncompressed, the full GINI image is 14.4Mbytes.
Web pages and documentation for GEMPAK 5.6 have been updated.
COMET case studies available via CODIAC
COMET case studies are compatible with the GEMPAK/NAWIPS environment, and are being made available via the CODIAC system.
GEMPAK workshop and tutorial online
All the handouts/displays for the GEMPAK workshop are been made available through the GEMPAK web page tutorial. Included in the presentation are numerous sample exercises and output samples. This format of presentation allows workshop participants to be able to review or utilize any of the material at their home institution. The tutorial is updated as new features dictate.
The GEMPAK tutorial can be found at:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/gempak/tutorial
