McIDAS, ldm-mcidas, Unidata-Wisconsin, Collaborations, and Cooperating Community Server Activities
Winter 2004
Tom Yoksas
February 27, 2003
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
Unidata McIDAS-X, -XCD
Version 2003 released on August 6.
As of February 25, 2004 85 unique sites (out of 202
access records on the Unidata web portal) have downloaded Unidata
McIDAS 2003. For comparison, 105 sites have downloaded
version 2002.
-X and -XCD Addendum #1 released November 4, 2003
-X and -XCD Addendum #2 released February 20, 2004
full support of Zlib compressed NOAAPORT GINI imagery added
to v2003 release
incorporate latest SSEC development for support of decoded model
data in files with non-standard names
initial work for porting McIDAS-X to MacOS-X was continued by
SSEC. With Panther release of MacOS-X, McIDAS is able to be
built and appears fully functional. Unidata Addendum #2
contains code mods that enable users to use MacOS-X/Panther
continuing support/bug fixes for Unidata and SSEC McIDAS-X, -XCD
conducted training workshop in October/November 2003. Attended
by 11 participants from as far away as Brazil (INPE/CPTEC) and
The Netherlands.
ldm-mcidas, Unidata-Wisconsin datastream, and NOAAPORT ingest
ldm-mcidas: current release, v2003, announced on August 6
Unidata-Wisconsin: increased broadcast frequency and number
of wavelength channels (bands) for GOES-East
and GOES-West IDD products. We are now sending all imager
channels in the IDD UNIWISC stream. The datastream
change was postponed from September to the beginning of January
because of site requests to not make the modifications during
the school year.
spatial coverage of the GOES-East products increased to include
South America (when the satellite is providing those scans) at
the beginning of February
NOAAPORT: development of NOAAPORT ingest system based on DVB-S
technology that the NWS is moving towards. Side-by-side ingest
comparisons of an existing Unidata NOAAPORT system with the new
DVB-S system showed that the new system operates with no loss
of data. We intend to create a web page describing our DVB-S
development so that universities can build their own NOAAPORT
ingest systems if they so choose (Yoksas, Chiswell, Schmidt,
Smith).
installated a Unidata NOAAPORT ingest system at
the Southern Region Climate Center (SRCC) at Louisiana State
University (LSU). This system was put together from software
developed at the UPC (Schmidt, Chiswell, Yoksas) and hardware
bought cheaply on Ebay (Schmidt). The SSEC-developed NOAAPORT
desktop ingest system (SDI) that had been used by the SRCC is
being repurposed at the UPC into a GOES ingester. The SRCC SDI
will be coupled with an SDI already in the UPC's possession to
provide remote ADDE access to full GOES imager and sounder data
for the Unidata community. A twin to this system has been in
operation at the SSEC for over a year, but announcement of its
existence has been delayed until this needed redundancy is in
place.
installed a Unidata NOAAPORT ingest system at the Universidad
de Costa Rica in San Jose, Costa Rica on February 24. This
system was put together from computer equipment being excessed
at UCAR, monies awarded to UCR PI Vilma Castro through a VCP
proposal (funded by the US and Canadian National Weather
Services), and existing equipment at the UCR (7 meter satellite
dish and associated electronics and cabling). After replacing
the LNB on the UCR dish with a PLL (Phase Loop Logic) one, the
system began ingesting data and relaying it on the UCR campus
at the end of the day on Wednesday, February 25. The
installation of this NOAAPORT reception system installation was
a fairly high profile undertaking at the UCR, so its success
was important for Unidata and MeteoForum.
performed stress tests of LDM-6 to demonstrate capability of relaying
Level II data with negligible latencies
participated in NWS Level II data distribution design planning
on-site LDM training to NWS regional headquarters
personnel proceeding
The most active collaboration, even though it is being conducted in spare
time, is the MeteoForum initiative that is funded by UCAR Director's
Opportunity Fund (Jack Fellows). A
MeteoForum status report is include separately.
User Support
continuing support of over 150 sites
continuing participation by foreign universities (McIDAS-X, LDM):
Argentina, Brazil, China (Hong Kong), Costa Rica, France, Portugal,
United Kingdom, Jamaica, Mexico, Spain, Russia (Institute of
Atmospheric Optics in Siberia), Thailand. Barbados will join
this list as early as May
statistics for UPC support email can be found in a
separate report
Cooperating Community Data Servers - Prelude to THREDDS
