McIDAS, ldm-mcidas, Unidata-Wisconsin, Collaborations, and Cooperating Community Server Activities
Fall 2004

Tom Yoksas
September 20, 2004

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 2004 released on July 21 (this is the earliest release of McIDAS-X ever). As of September 20, 2004 45 unique sites (out of 117 access records on the Unidata web portal) have downloaded Unidata McIDAS 2004. For comparison, 105 sites have downloaded version 2003.

  Some highlights of the v2004 release include:

  • McIDAS is now full supported on the MacOS-X (Darwin) operating system. McIDAS-XCD requires some entry point name changes (MacOS-X treats entry point names case insensitively).
  • Unidata now supports McIDAS on Windows XP (using Microsoft Services for Unix)
  • McIDAS now has the ability to use gzip compression during transfers of data from ADDE remote servers to McIDAS-X client workstations. Remote server workstations must have port 112 open to allow clients running McIDAS-X 2004 to access their data. Likewise, ports 500 and 503 must also be open to allow clients running McIDAS-X 2003 to access their data.
  • the type of data transfer can now be specified on a per-application basis by specifying the MCC= keyword on the command line.
  • McIDAS can now produce GeoTIFF format output
  • there are new ADDE servers for AIRS (Aqua satellite) data
  • there are numerous enhancements to the SSEC GUI
  • support for building with gcc/f2c/mcfc was dropped. Sites now use the gcc/g77 compiler combination instead.
  • Unidata McIDAS is now supported on RedHat Fedora Core 1 & 2 Linux. SSEC supports McIDAS on RedHat Enterprise WS 3.0 Linux.

• updated Unidata McIDAS website to use same look-and-feel as other Unidata applications.

• -X and -XCD Addendum #1 scheduled for released in mid-October

• incorporate latest SSEC development for support of decoded model data in files with non-standard names

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

• training workshop scheduled for 26-30 October 2004.

ldm-mcidas, Unidata-Wisconsin datastream, and NOAAPORT ingest

• ldm-mcidas: current release, v2003, announced on August 6, 2003

  Next release, v2004, will be released at the end of September/early October. v2004 contains a fix for a bug in decoding Unidata-Wisconsin imagery using McIDAS routing table naming facilities. The bug was not truncating images that were being overwritten. The effect of the bug was the file sizes decoded using McIDAS routing table naming facilities were larger than those not using the routing table naming facilities.

• Unidata-Wisconsin: We continue to send all imager channels in the IDD UNIWISC stream. The spatial coverage of the GOES-East products includes all of South America whenever the satellite is providing those scans. Increased disk space requirement is evidentally not an issue for UNIWISC users since we have received no inquiries regarding the change.

• NOAAPORT: We developed a NOAAPORT ingest system based on the DVB-S technology that the NWS will move to at the beginning of February, 2005. We are considering creating a web page describing our DVB-S development so that universities can build their own NOAAPORT ingest systems if they so choose. Our NOAAPORT ingest system will not be a supported product. (Schmidt, Chiswell, Yoksas).

• 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 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.

• NOAAPORT ingest system installed at the Universidad de Costa Rica in San Jose, Costa Rica (February) has been functioning well for the past two months. Previously, the system suffered occasional ingest lockups that were traced down to the use of LiS software under SMP Linux (Fedora Core 1) kernels. The same system running under a single processor kernel shows none of the problems encountered when run with dual processors.

  The UCR system was put together from excessed computer equipment at UCAR, monies awarded to UCR PI Vilma Castro through a WMO 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). This NOAAPORT reception system installation remains a fairly high profile undertaking at the UCR, so its success was important for Unidata and MeteoForum.

Collaborations

Collaboration activities remain mostly unchanged since the May 2003 report. Details can be found in May 1, 2003 Policy Committee Report.

Collaborations that are most active include:

• NWS NEXRAD Level II Data Relay. This is described in more detail in the LDM/IDD Status Report.

• MeteoForum. This collaboration has resulted in the creation in a South American extension of the IDD. This effort, called the IDD-Brazil, has captured the interest in the highest levels in Brazilian meteorological circles. More information on the IDD-Brazil can be found in the MeteoForum status report.

User Support

• continuing support of over 150 sites

• continuing participation by foreign universities (GEMPAK, McIDAS-X, LDM): Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, China (Hong Kong), Costa Rica, France, Jamaica, Mexico, Portugal, Russia (Moscow State University), South Korea, Spain, Thailand, United Kingdom.

• statistics for UPC support email can be found in a separate report

Cooperating Community Data Servers - Prelude to THREDDS

Texas A&M has very recently joined the cooperating community server effort by opening access to a machine that keeps 30 days of both Level II and Level III NEXRAD data online. The list of cooperating community servers and the datasets that they make available can be seen in Publically Accessible McIDAS ADDE servers.

This page was prepared by Tom Yoksas.