Status Report: McIDAS

April 2023- November 2023

Tom Yoksas, Mike Zuranski

Executive Summary

Unidata McIDAS-X/-XCD development has officially ceased.  Our MUG membership with SSEC will be maintained; Unidata sites can continue to download and use Unidata McIDAS-X.  SSEC will continue to support their McIDAS-X software through at least the GOES-R series (through December 2036).

Future updates to Unidata McIDAS-X/-XCD will be few and far between, and will primarily be done at SSEC rather than in-house at Unidata.  These updates will likely be limited to critical fixes and possibly small enhancements.

Users should continue to contact support-mcidas@unidata.ucar.edu for download requests.  We will continue to host the mcidas-x@unidata.ucar.edu email list.

This will be the final McIDAS status report.

Activities Since the Last Status Report

Aside from routine updates/bug fixes to existing code and tables, the main area of activity has been enhancing the GOES-R servers.

Other recent changes and other news:

• McIDAS-X updated for new NAAPort Level 2 products
  
• Culling of now archaic ADDE datasets on our public-facing ADDE server instances
  
• Mike Zuranski and Tom Yoksas attended the McIDAS Users’ Group (MUG) Members Meeting on September 25-28.  Mike gave a presentation on McIDAS-X usage at College of DuPage which was very well received. Mike also formed numerous relationships at SSEC, timely considering Tom’s retirement…
  
• Tom retired from Unidata on September 16th.  He plans on continuing to collaborate with SSEC contributing to McIDAS-X development.  

Current/Ongoing Activities

• Support use of McIDAS-X/XCD in-house

• Ensure that the Unidata instances of McIDAS ADDE continue to  function efficiently (ADDE serves on the order of 1.5 TB/day from three servers that Unidata operates on behalf of the community)

• McIDAS-X is used to convert GOES-East/West ABI imagery that is in netCDF4 format to McIDAS AREA format that is usable by all supported display and analysis packages (except Python/MetPy) for the Unidata-Wisconsin (UNIWISC aka MCIDAS) IDD feed.  

New Activities

• Mike is working on making updated map files for McIDAS.  Many of the maps, especially the ones added by Unidata years ago, are significantly out of date.  There have been several user requests for updated maps, though SSEC hasn’t updated theirs in a while either.
  
• With code contributed by SSEC, Mike is building a utility to update numerous base maps in bulk:  

• New GIS data is downloaded, their URLs saved in the scripting which scrapes the latest data from official sources.
• Maps that will be updated include:

• County, forecast/fire zones and CWA boundaries
• Roads, rivers, railroads and Canadian provinces
• Newly added marine zones, including offshore and high seas zones

• AWIPS Basemap map files are complete, bu        t may be optimized further
• Will Include a feature for users to convert locally stored shapefiles for custom maps
  

• SSEC has received a preliminary copy of some of the new maps for evaluation, and are excited that this utility is coming.
  
• This project is currently a low priority.  The goal is to have this completed by the end of the year.  Completion of this project may be delayed by more urgent matters if they arise.

Relevant Metrics

• Data delivered by the Unidata McIDAS ADDE servers exceeds 1.7 TB/day.  The great majority of the data being served is imagery from GOES-16/17/18.
  

• See the Status Report: Support for 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.  Recently, the ldm-mcidas code was moved to GitHub.

Geostationary Satellite Data Ingest and Data Serving

Unidata continues to ingest GOES-East and GOES-West imager data at the UCAR Foothills Lab and NCAR Mesa lab campuses in Boulder.

• Direct, programmatic access to real-time GOES-East (GOES-16) and GOES-West (currently GOES-1) data via McIDAS ADDE services on three publicly accessible servers (lead.unidata.ucar.edu, atm.ucar.edu and adde.ssec.wisc.edu) has been averaging on the order of 1.6 TB/day for the past two years. Ongoing Activities

• Continued ingest, distribution via the IDD and ADDE serving of GOES-East  and GOES-West imagery from the GRB downlinks we installed in UCAR

• Continued ingest and ADDE serving of GOES-14 imagery when available.  GOES-14 remains in its standby location (104W) and is turned on for periodic testing as needed. GOES-17 has been replaced by GOES-18 as the West geostationary platform, and it was recently drifted to approximately 105W where it will function as an in-orbit standby for GOES-16 and GOES-18.

These efforts require maintenance of the satellite ingest and data serving equipment.

Strategic Focus Areas

We support the following goals described in Unidata Strategic Plan:

1. Managing Geoscience Data
   Remote, programmatic access to data provided by the Abstract Data Distribution Environment (ADDE) environment of McIDAS has been a model for the development of remote access methodologies since 1994.  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.  ADDE servers operated by Unidata are currently serving in excess of 1.6 TB/day.
   
2. Providing Useful Tools
   McIDAS remains the application of choice for the satellite meteorology community.  The Abstract 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.
   
   The fifth generation of McIDAS, McIDAS--V, unlike its predecessors, is a fully open source application that is in wide scale and growing use in the worldwide satellite meteorological community
   
   McIDAS ADDE continues to evolve and provide access to a rapidly increasing volume of imagery and non-image data.

3. Supporting People
   McIDAS is still in active use by those interested in satellite meteorology worldwide.
   

Prepared October 2023