Members: Representatives: Mohan Ramamurthy, Chair Tim Spangler, COMET Denise Hawk David Knight UPC Staff: James Moore Dave Fulker Charles Murphy Ben Domenico Paul Ruscher Sally Bates Melanie Wetzel Mitch Baltuch Don Murray ATAC Representative: Mike Wright Harry Edmon Tom Yoksas Linda Miller
Review of actions from February and June meetings took place with two being carried over.
ACTION: Sally Bates will summarize information on LCD panels and video display systems that would be useful for university sites. Sally will take the lead on soliciting this information from the community and post the results to Unidata's WWW server.
ACTION: Jim Moore and Sally Bates will create an article on the site survey results.
Dave gave an abbreviated presentation of IDD. Valuable characteristics of the IDD are:
Curent usage statistics are being tracked and available on Unidata's WWW server.
Currently existing are: 3 ingesters, 5 relays, 25 leafs, (unmonitored traffic-2 ingesters and 20- leafs and relays). The delivery is timely and in some cases faster than satellite transmission. The exceptions are when the network` fails and lasts more than 30 minutes.
The statistics measuring approach needs to be refined and there is a need to quantify the statistics gathering system to improve warning system operation at source sites. This work is being addressed. Automatic failover will be developed for a future LDM. Currently the switchover is manual. The contract with Alden requires redundancy for the IDD system. Another option would be to work with sites who are getting satellite reception to provide redundancy.
Ben Domenico is leading the effort on working with ANS for backbone configuration of the IDD.
DIFAX will be available from Alden via IDD through paid subscriptions from each site. There will be redistribution constraints. The cost will be the same as the satellite service ($98/month). The data will be in Group 3 facsimile format. The printing display issues are currently unresolved. Fulker created a community e-mail to notify them of the results of the Alden negotiation and to invite community participation to provide a solution to the printing display issue. Alden will provide software for viewing by summer 1995.
Some sites are moving to asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) to improve their networking capabilities. Universities may need to limit their data appetite. The backbone transition will have little effect on performance of the Internet. Currently, new costs are underwritten by NSF, but the long-term impact could be between 10-15% for most universities.
Unidata will assist with data flow configuration of other data if it becomes a widely used data type.
Policy Committee issues to be discussed at the 14-15 November meeting will be:
NWS is fostering Level II data use of NEXRAD data to universities. The current contract allows NWS to place an extra pipe into the radar for such use.
ACTION: Linda Miller will follow up on direct connect options for universities at NWS Headquarters.
By late spring or early summer, COMET will convert about 10 case studies for use in the fall on the N-AWIPS workstations. It is questionable to have satellite or radar data readiness; maybe satellite, probably not radar. COMET's preference is to eventually distribute the case studies through Unidata. A universal case study format has not been defined. They cannot be distributed on CD due to size.
Discussions are taking place on common formats for data management, especially
within UCAR/UOP.
The next topic recommended meteorology courses to be taken as undergraduate
courses. The draft was submitted by Phil Smith. There were minor modifications--24
credits with a mix of courses; differs from Federal standard, can choose correctly
to satisfy the Federal standard, but there is a need to tell students that they
cannot qualify for a Federal job if the site cannot meet the Federal standard
course work standards.
Jim Cowie, COMET, has been developing a NIDS decoder that results in McIDAS
AREA files as output. GEMPAK can also use these AREA files. There is work to
be done for McIDAS to fully use these AREA files. Full calibration and auxiliary
blocks need to be developed for each NIDS product type, and McIDAS routines
that understand the calibrations and auxiliary information need to be developed.
The intent is that by the end of the year NIDS and NOWRAD products will be viewable
with correct navigation. More detailed use of the AREAs may take longer.
The NIDS floater needs to be discussed and action taken by Users Comm. Overview:
agreement with WSI for a NIDS floater arrangement. Users can choose where the
floater should be directed for each day. Three radars can be chosen for a $50
additional fee/month.
Questions:
ACTION: The UPC will set up an e-mail mailing list for FLOATER-NIDS
subscribers only!
It is the consensus of Users Comm that Millersville will administer the floater,
subject to review at each usercomm meeting. The time frame will be determined
by Millersville.
ACTION: Fulker should notify Russ DeSouza at Millersville of the User
Committee decision for Millersville to administer the NIDS floater.
Several new products are available. Among them are:
Young recommended that the Unirec machine should be upgraded and consolidated
with the IDD machine.
The timing of the termination of the satellite broadcast needs to be discussed.
It could stop transmission of most MD and GRID files. There is a need for more
bandwidth, when the IDD is fully deployed and feeding all leaf nodes, for floaters
and derived products.
Additional products to be considered may be:
SSEC has the goal to make AWIPS and McIDAS operations interoperable.
Joe Friday has suggested one minute data from GOES-J running continuously.
Cloud images out to 48 hrs are available on the Gopher server.
GOES: Caveats: Aspect ratio-Visible is oversampled in the horizontal as compared to the vertical
a bit in width (0.571:1).
Full METEOSAT archive will be added to data collection from Germany to Wisconsin.
Total bandwidth-2.11 mbits/sec from GOES-8 SSEC is waiting for Unidata to inform Wisconsin when they want the GOES-8
data.
Propose--increase amount of data. Only 60% of bandwidth is being used. The
satellite imagery is taking up 2/3 of bandwidth.
OS/2 1.3 sunset by Unidata on 1 January 1995; forces users to move to OS/2
2.1 or 3.0 (SSEC sunsetted OS/2 1.3 1 January 1994; IBM no longer supports OS/2
1.3)
GEMPAK does not support GOES-8 navigation. WXP release is planned for summer,
1995. GOES-8 support is dependent on Purdue getting information on GOES-8 projection.
Solution--(temporary solution to give developers time to add GOES-8 navigation)
Remap GOES-8 data for GOES-7 navigation.
SSEC wants a dedicated UNIX workstation so the floater can be changed by a
designated administrator which would provide direct control.
Sounder data was discussed. (10 km) Sophistication of users needs to be enhanced.
Frequency of soundings are more frequent.
There will be no more satellite feed after Dec 95. One option could be to
add products to IDD and not to satellite feed. This would keep the functionality
the same for users of the satellite broadcast until the end of December 1995
Options:
VIS 5D application integration will operate off of same data bases and will
eventually be fully supported when complete.
Fulker proposed the following: ACTION: A sub-group was formed to development a strawman GOES-8 wish
list. The members are: Melanie Wetzel, Charlie Murphy, Paul Ruscher, Harry Edmon,
Denise Laitsch, SSEC, and Tom Yoksas, Unidata Focal Point. The group will develop
recommendations for the short-term and long-term plans.
ACTION: Linda Miller will check on availability of radar composite
from NOAA (30 min to hourly)
Add paragraph in note to Community about possible netpbm coverter and XV viewer.
LDM4.134 is most current version. It is reliable through outages to one hour.
Three solid relays are now fanning to eight relays. McTingest can feed OS/2
only sites by plugging into the back-end of the LDM server. This is viewed as
a "quick fix", not the final solution.
Illinois, Washington and MERIT (Univ of Mich) are the 3 top level relays.
Nov 1 there will be a general release of the LDM 4.1 to the community. Ben's
presentation was distributed to the committee.
Attendees included University sites, government labs and UCAR/NCAR:
NIDS software has been created from the original RAD program. It should be
available next summer. It supports overlay and looping. Development of WXP is
becoming a problem due to Dan's pressures at Purdue. There could be a potential
hole in development.
ACTION: Send an acknowledgement of contribution to Dan Vietor from
Dave Fulker and Bob Fox with cc to Dan's chairman, Ernie Agee. Dave will draft
letter.
N-TRANS is a viewer. N-TRANS version will be the same for universities and
Scientific Operations Officers (SOOs). Satellite is part of GEMPAK now. NSAT
may not be included. HRS can be used with GEMPAK with bridge software.
WXP station tables are available in GEMPAK form.
Latest version of McIDAS provides Function Key Menus to interface for analysis
and overlays.
WETNET browse imagery was added in September.
Tutorial will be placed in Web on McIDAS. Don Murray will be working on it.
Availability will be next year.
Tcl/Tk GUI for McIDAS is being developed. Tcl/Tk components in current Function
Key Menu right now.
Refer to David Knight's Huffman summary e-mail, 28 Oct 1994.
The IDL has interfaces to read and write data in netCDF, CDF, or HDF. May
use IDL instead of adapting everything to netCDF.
How intuitive is the means for implementation for packages? It becomes subjective.
Desired algorithms need documentation from users. How will this be presented
to the Policy Committee? What tools are needed to do your work better? New elements need to be added to the matrix. Strengths of each current package
needs to be documented in a way to help users choose a package intelligently.
ACTION: User Comm will create a brief community survey of software
packages currently being used at Unidata sites. Time frame for the survey--Jan'95
to compile and prepare for April 1995 meeting.
The demise of the Huffman Matrix, as we've known it, was declared and a new
multi-dimensional approach must be implemented.
The discussion of the Huffman Matrix led to a discussion about Unidata sites'
needs and the dichotomy of needs among the sites. A different approach of obtaining
the necessary information required by sites from the UPC may need to be implemented.
Questions: ACTION: The User Committee will divide the Unidata sites list and telephone
the site representatives to discuss their needs and obtain feedback on their
relationship with Unidata.
ACTION: A community e-mail reminder of each upcoming User Committee
meeting will be disseminated to the community soliciting comments or issues
that are relevant for the committee to discuss.
Heads & Chairs meeting - Tim Spangler
There were approximately 60 who attended the meeting. The AMS salary survey appears
in BAMS this month. There has been zero progress in recruiting and hiring minorities;
there are about 25% in the meteorology field. Women faculty members are being
paid 4-5k less than men.
A factor that needs to be considered is the load on the site administering the
floater. Currently the satellite floater has been managed by Millersville. They
have offered to administer the NIDS floater.
Answer: via e-mail request; provide justification.
Answer: not necessarily
SSEC Plans & GOES-8 presentation - J.T. Young
Copies of the presentation were distributed at the meeting.
GOES-8 signal format changes are being performed to add more information. McIDAS
is being updated to support the projections used by the ETA and MRF models (Lambert
Conformal Tangent projection). The next upgrade for McIDAS is scheduled for June
'95.
Data access plans--June 95-Abstract Data Distributed Environment--API standardized
interface to ask for data by named data groups, specify parameter (matrix, scan).
The client looks up on WAN or LAN. Servers for netCDF, GRIB, BUFR, etc., HDF.
separate imager and sounder
2 modes for operation planned
Navigation will not be perfect; it can change throughout the scan. Interuptions
in one image presentation--difference is two elements 4km resolution may not
be noticeable.
515 Megabytes/per 3 hrs--full global scan
Discussion:
Timing issues: Tom Yoksas
Unidata release of McIDAS--one per year in June
Current version does not fully support GOES-8
Introduction of GOES-8 needs to be synchronized with a new release of McIDAS for
use with the new data.
8 bit data will be broadcast; not 10 bit.
RECOMMENDATION:
NOAA has released a software package that does conversions that supports the changes
for GOES-8.
There is a freeware version of McIDAS--object code only--tailored to specific
data sets; NASA/NOAA Pathfinder data sets are available from AMES and SSEC's FTP.
Real-time data cannot be accessed. These are available in UNIX on four platforms.
Since OS2 cannot function as IDD relays--
"Would rather have data with no software than software with no data." Dave Knight
DIFAX - Fulker
Provided the draft announcement of DIFAX availability via IDD by subscription
to Alden with usage constraints. Fulker solicited comments.
IDD and KU band - Ben Domenico
To date we have 52 in the application queues.
Discussion
The recent community announcement (10/23/94) was distributed. Unidata's WWW server
has information available to community on the status and activities surrounding
the IDD progress.
User Workshop Recap - Mitch Baltuch
A new format produced three weeks of workshops. The entire LDM workshop is available
in HTML on the WWW server. Use a Web browser which links to exercises, manpages,
UNIX commands, etc. It can be found on Unidata's LDM homepage.
McIDAS - 23
GEMPAK-15
LDM4-28
WXP-7
IEIS-11
WXP - Mike Wright
The WXP workshop was advertised as an advanced workshop. Dan Vietor conducted
the workshop. Dan is scheduled to release version 5.0 during late second quarter
of 1995.
GEMPAK - Don Murray and Tom Yoksas
Workshop latest release of GEMPAK was in August. It comprised several bug fixes.
NetCDF interface is being worked. GEMPAK help file at MIT is well done-Peggy will
get it from MIT in tar file. GUI is being defined with COMET/NMC for GEMPAK development.
McIDAS - Tom Yoksas
Two new versions -one for X and one for OS/2.
Huffman Matrix - Dave Knight
Background: George Huffman created a table that showed all of the Unidata
software packages and common holes. It was meant to allow development. What does
Unidata need for applications? Now, the Policy Commmittee wants to know where
Unidata needs to go for future.
Sharp? Vis5D? Dicer?
Add things that are missing from the current matrix.
What is the purpose of the matrix?
Is there a need for a re-evaluation of current packages?
Is additionall functionality important or should another package be adopted?
Do we need to document the data types available from NWS Family of Service?
Do we need to revise the Unidata fact sheets to provide information in a different
form?
What are the Unidata sites missing by way of needs and support?
After a long discussion, the committee agreed to take the following actions:
Summary created by Linda Miller
Go to Archive of Summaries
or Unidata Home Page