Status Report: McIDAS

April 2020 - September 2020

Tom Yoksas

Areas for Committee Feedback

We are requesting your feedback on the following topics:

1. Are there any features that users would like to be added to Unidata McIDAS-X and/or ldm-mcidas?

Activities Since the Last Status Report

Aside from routine updates/bugfixes to existing code and tables, the main area of activity recently has been the incorporation of UW/SSEC McIDAS-X/XCD v2020 updates into the Unidata MciDAS-X v2020 release.

Current Activities

• Unidata McIDAS version 2020 will be made available for release in early to mid-September.
  
  v2020  will include all SSEC versions up to and including the current McIDAS-X and -XCD releases, both of which are v2020.1.  A planned v2020a release will contain updates to the GOES-R/S ADDE servers.

• McIDAS-X is used to convert GOES-16 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.  

The v2020 release features the following:

• SSEC added support for McIDAS-X on RHEL 8 systems, ended support of McIDAS-X on RHEL 6 and Windows 7 systems, and added preliminary support of McIDAS-X on Windows 10 systems.
• Updated GOES-R Series ABI servers to list calculated resolutions in IMGLIST FORM=BAND and FORM=ALL output, and to support GOES-17 Fusion imagery because of modifications to allow more flexible file naming formats.
• Updated GEO command with improved logic when using Himawari imagery, and when merging imagery from multiple satellites and the domain contains the dateline.
• Improved performance of RGBDISP command, especially when it is run multiple times in a script.
• Updated VIIR servers and calibration module to correctly set the RAW value of Band 18 (M13) pixels to zero in bowtie deletion and bad or missing line regions.

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 occasionally  receives 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.

• 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

• Data delivered by the Unidata McIDAS ADDE servers exceeds 1 TB/day.  The great majority of the data being served is imagery from GOES-16 followed by imagery from GOES-17.
  

• 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.

The next major addition to this package will be  the development of a “decoder” for GRB delivered Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) data.  This development is aimed at greatly increasing the speed at which displays of the GLM data can be made in McIDAS-X, the IDV and McIDAS-V.

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 (GOES-17) data via McIDAS ADDE services on three publicly accessible servers (lead.unidata.ucar.edu, adde.ucar.edu (aka atm.ucar.edu) and adde.ssec.wisc.edu) has been averaging over 43 TB/month since the since the late spring of 2019

Planned Activities

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-15 and GOES-14 imagery when available.  GOES-15 and GOES-14 were put into standby mode on March 2, 2020.  GOES-14 will remain in its standby location (104W) and will be turned on for periodic testing as needed. GOES-15 supplemental operations began on Sunday, August 9, 2020 at 0000 UTC and will continue through Thursday, September 3, 2020 1600 UTC.  GOES-15 was returned to service to augment surveillance during the Pacific hurricane season.

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

New Activities

Establish a testbed for generating Level 2 products from GOES-16/17 imagery and select model output.  The intention is to be able to test vetted algorithms submitted by community members for a long enough period for the algorithms to be fully tested.

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 August 21, 2020