Status Report: McIDAS

April 2016 - September 2016

Tom Yoksas

Activities Since the Last Status Report

Aside from routine updates/bugfixes to existing code and tables, the main area of investigation has to been to add indexing to ADDE datasets to speed access into large datasets.

Prior Activities

• Unidata McIDAS version 2016 was made available in March.  v2016 includes all SSEC versions up to and including the current release, v2016.1 and Unidata updates and bugfixes.

Changes to Unidata McIDAS continue to be made through an addendum process.

The latest releases features the following:

• Introduction of and an update to an ADDE server for Himawari imagery (this is a precursor for a GOES-R ADDE server)
• Initial release of an ADDE server for GOES-R imagery.  It is believed that this server will __not__ work with the GOES-R image sectors that will be included in the NOAAPort SBN.  If this is, in fact, the case, new development will be needed to support those images.

Ongoing Activities

We plan to continue the following activities:

• SSEC McIDAS Advisory Committee (MAC)

The UPC (Yoksas, Ho) continues to participate as the Unidata representative to the McIDAS Advisory Committee (MAC) that is operated by SSEC.

The MAC was assembled by UW/SSEC to advise SSEC on McIDAS-X users needs/concerns/desires for development in the next generation McIDAS, McIDAS-V. The MAC was modeled after the Unidata IDV Steering Committee.

• Interest in McIDAS by Non-core Users

The UPC continues to receive requests for McIDAS-X and help using McIDAS-X from international university users, U.S. government agencies and other non-traditional Unidata users (e.g., private businesses, etc.). Government agencies and non-traditional Unidata users are referred to UW/SSEC for access to McIDAS; international educational community user requests are granted on a case-by-case basis after they provide a clear statement of their acceptance of the terms of use provided by SSEC.

New Activities

Ongoing Activities

Continued support of existing and new community members.

New Activities

Add support for new types of data when they become available, otherwise McIDAS-X support is in maintenance mode.

Relevant Metrics

• Internet2 (I2) bandwidth usage by the McIDAS ADDE protocol routinely exceeds 8 TB/week.
• McIDAS-X/-XCD Inquiry Metrics

ldm-mcidas Decoders Activities

Development

ldm-mcidas releases are made when needed to support changes in software development and operating system environments. ldm-mcidas v2012 was released at the end of September, 2012. This release addressed building on newer OS versions.

Geostationary Satellite Data Ingest

Unidata continues to ingest GOES-East and GOES-West imager data at the UCAR Foothills Lab campus in Boulder.

• Direct, programmatic access to real-time GOES-East (GOES-13) data via McIDAS ADDE routinely exceeds 2 TB/month.

• Direct, programmatic access to real-time GOES-West (GOES-15) data via McIDAS ADDE routinely exceeds 1.7 TB/month.

Planned Activities

Ongoing Activities

Continued ingest and serving of GOES-East and GOES-West imagery from the current constellation of GOES GVAR platforms. This effort requires sporadic maintenance of the satellite ingest and data serving equipment.

New/future Activities

Install a GOES-R downlink, processing and data serving capability at the NCAR Mesa Lab using the easternmost of the old USAN satellite pads.  Launch of GOES-R is currently planned for November 4, 2016.

Investigate the feasibility of moving the GOES-R imagery and products to “the cloud” in real-time.  Preliminary discussions with Amazon Web Services representatives have already take place, and they are very interested in the GOES-R data being made available in the same way as Landsat imagery.

Strategic Focus Areas

We support the following goals described in Unidata Strategic Plan:

1. Enable widespread, efficient access to geoscience data
   McIDAS remains the application of choice for the satellite meteorology community.
   The Advanced Data Distribution Environment (ADDE) component of McIDAS was the first application offered by Unidata to provide remote, programmatic access to a wide variety of data that is important to the atmospheric science community.
   
2. Develop and provide open-source tools for effective use of geoscience data
   The fifth generation of McIDAS, McIDAS-V, unlike its predecessors, is a fully open source application that is is in wide scale and growing use in the satellite meteorology community.
   McIDAS ADDE continues to evolve and provide access to increasing volumes of image and non-image data.
   
3. Provide cyberinfrastructure leadership in data discovery, access, and use
   Concepts articulated in ADDE inspired the development of THREDDS (to address the lack of rich metadata available in ADDE) and RAMADDA. ADDE remains one of the most used data services in the Unidata suite serving over 4.5 TB per month.  ADDE servers in the SSEC Data Center are currently serving over 1 TB per day.
   
4. Build, support, and advocate for the diverse geoscience community
   McIDAS is sought for use by those interested in satellite meteorology worldwide.

Prepared September, 2016