October 2021– May 2022
Yuan Ho, Julien Chastang
The IDV 6.1 will be released in July of 2022.
__Latest netCDF-Java Version__
The version of the netCDF-Java library currently distributed with the stable release version (6.0u1) is the 5.5.3-SNAPSHOT . There have been many new features and bug fixes in that range. The complete release notes for these versions can be found here.
__IDV Certificates__
Java Webstart, Windows app and MacOS certificates have been renewed and will be valid until at least May 30, 2021 (MacOS certificate is valid until 2024). Moreover, as properly signing the IDV under these different environments can be an involved process, this information has been thoroughly documented here.
__IDV Webmod2 Migration__
Webmod2 project: Working with other developers to migrate all the IDV related resources, release engineering process, and documents to the new UCAR web infrastructure.
__Changes to nightly release that will eventually be incorporated into into stable version__
__Dark Mode Appearance__
In macOS and Linux users can choose to adopt a light, dark, or IDV regular appearance. The dark appearance, known as Dark Mode, implements an interface style that many apps already adopt. Users can edit the preference and can choose their interface appearance based on ambient lighting conditions.
__New PROBSEVERE Data Display__
The IDV has developed a new data source type to create a time series display of the PROBSEVERE Statistical models output that provide probabilistic guidance to forecasters on the likelihood of severe weather occurrence for convection in the near term. Algorithms of PROBSEVERE incorporate multiple datasets from satellite, radar, total lightning, and NWP into easy-to interpret products. With a direct connection to the NCEP PROBSEVERE web page to retrieve data of the last 24 hours and the time matching feature of the IDV, it is very easy to integrate PROBSEVERE model data with other data source types and to assist forecasters in severe weather situations.
__New ADT Integration__
The ADT integration and development: The Advanced Dvorak Technique (ADT) utilizes longwave-infrared, temperature measurements from geostationary satellites to estimate tropical cyclone (TC) intensity. The Dvorak Technique continues to be the standard method for estimating TC intensity.The IDV ADT integration is still experimental and has not been found through testing. More information about the ADT and various run-time options, algorithms, and program outputs can be found in the McIDAS-X ADT-Version 8.2.1 Users' Guide at http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/misc/adt/info.html. We are going to further integrate the ADT feature with the IDV ACTF hurricane track analysis interface to provide a more powerful tool for the community.
__MP4 Movie Capture__
Other than Quicktime and animated GIF and other movie formats, the support of MP4 format has been added to the output format list in this release.
__WRF Grid Diagnostics Formulas__
The original WRF netCDF output is in sigma coordinate. The current grid diagnostic formula is mostly designed for the isobaric surface parameters. The newly added WRF derived formulas provide the capability to directly create the derived parameters such as: Equivalent potential temperature, relative humidity, Saturated Equivalent potential temperature, dewpoint, and others.
__Latest Version of VisAD__
The SSEC team at UW, Madison has made a number of improvements to support 3D trajectories.
In the hybrid environment of in person and remote-learning system as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we keep helping universities and research institutes to run Unidata’s Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) at home. I provided a remote IDV training class to a group of radar class students from the University of Millersville. Yuan also prepares several remote IDV training classes for the coming school year.
As international collaborations, I provided several online training classes for university students of Turkey, Spain, and Italy. Students from Turkey ran the regional WRF models and do the analysis and visualizations of outputs with the IDV, students from Spain using the GFS datasets from our TDS server and the IDV new grid coverage feature to do analysis across the data boundary, and students from Italy run the IDV to visualize 3D oceanographic observations in the Mediterranean sea for climate research.
In collaboration with UCAR Center for Science Education and Computational Information Systems Laboratory, the project developed an extended IDV package for a Real-Time Weather Museum Touchscreen. This new real-time weather museum touchscreen display will undergo further usability testing to eventually join other weather and climate exhibits at NCAR’s Mesa Lab in Boulder, CO, and at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center Visitor Center in Cheyenne, WY.
Synoptic–Dynamic Meteorology in 3D: Introducing an IDV-Based Lab Manual by Gary Lackmann, B. Mapes and K. Tyle
A Google Scholar Search reveals a number of publications that cite use of the IDV (doi:10.5065/D6RN35XM).
__2021 AGU Fall Meeting__
__2022 AMS Annual Meeting__
__Investigation of Java 3D Alternative__
Because of concerns about the long-term viability of the open-source Java 3D project, the IDV team has begun discussions with our University of Wisconsin, SSEC collaborators to replace Java 3D with a more viable alternative within the VisAD API. We have started investigating whether the Ardor 3D can meet that objective. Looking into alternatives to Java 3D was also a goal described in the Unidata 2018 Five-year plan.
We plan to upgrade the version of OPenJDK Java. This change will necessitate in depth testings and the IDV building and distribution workflow.
__E-Support__
The IDV team continues to provide the geoscience community with high-quality support through e-support software and idv-users mail list. In the last half year the IDV team has closed ~40 e-support tickets. Each individual ticket may and often does involve many back-and-forth messages. There is an especially large number of support requests coming from international users.
Top ten universities running IDV are: Millersville, Oklahoma, University of Utah, St Cloud state, Plymouth, NC State, West Kentucky, Lyndon State, University of Illinois, and San Francisco State.
__GitHub Pull Requests__
In the area of greater collaborative development, since the migration of the IDV project to github, we have closed a total of 125 “pull requests” or code contributions from internal and external collaborators.
__Youtube IDV Instructional Videos__
In the area of online IDV training, the Youtube IDV instructional videos have been viewed thousands of times.
We support the following goals described in Unidata Strategic Plan:
Prepared May, 2022