An introduction to McIDAS – the Man-computer Interactive

Data Access System

(as part of the 20th Annual CIMSS Summer Workshop on Atmospheric and Earth Sciences – 25 June 2012)

10:45 AM – 12:45 PM

- McIDAS overview (Gary); McIDAS-V training (Jay)

<lunch, weather briefing>

02:00 PM – 04:15 PM

- McIDAS hands-on development of mini-projects, concluding with student presentations of such. (with mentors: Rick, Joleen, Kaba, and Will)

Who We Are

SSEC (Space Science and Engineering Center) is part of the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW).

SSEC hosts CIMSS (Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies), including a NOAA/NESDIS (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration /National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service) research branch – ASPB (Advanced Satellite Products Branch).

Who We Are – SSEC• Scientists - examining the Earth from satellites to gain

insight into weather and climate

• Modelers - developing diagnostic and forecast models to explain the weather and climate

• Engineers - developing new observing tools for spacecraft, aircraft, and ground-based platforms

• Data Center – real-time satellite imagery from 16 satellites and managing online archive of 1 Petabyte (back to 1978)

• Software developers - creating tools to visualize and manipulate data for use by researchers and operational meteorologists

What Is McIDAS-V?

McIDAS – Man computer Interactive Data Access System

• Powerful data analysis and 3-D visualization tool• McIDAS-V is the fifth generation of McIDAS• “V” stands for 5 (the Roman Numeral V)• The first generation of McIDAS began in 1972

Storm cloud temperatures, showing overshooting tops in 2-D from above

Satellite composite image overlaid with GFS relative humidity contour cross-sectionSame overshooting tops,

rotated to view from the side

Viewing data, developing algorithms, validating results Integration of geophysical data Ease of reprojection Remote and local data access Includes a “bridge” to McIDAS-X, allowing –X users to continue

using legacy code, but to visualize in McIDAS-V

McIDAS-X McIDAS-X VisAD + IDV + HYDRA = VisAD + IDV + HYDRA = McIDAS-VMcIDAS-V

What Is McIDAS-V?

What Is McIDAS-V?• Uses an extensible framework

- Built a framework on top for adapting new sources of data (format and type; local or remote), for updating user interface components, and for creating novel displays and analysis techniques

• Developed in the Java programming language – object oriented; write once - run anywhere (very portable)

• Persistence mechanism (bundles) for saving and sharing interesting displays/analysis with other McIDAS-V users

• Python based user defined computation for scripting

• Java-based, open-source, and freely available

McIDAS Users Group (MUG) members June 2012

•3TIER Group – Seattle, WA•Agencia Estatal de Meteorologia (AEMET) – Madrid, Spain•Antarctic Meteorological Research Center – Madison, WI•Australian Bureau of Meteorology – Melbourne, Australia•Aviation Weather Center - Kansas City, MO [NOAA]•The Boeing Company – Seattle, WA•Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE) – Buenos Aires, Argentina•Comprehensive Large Array-Data Stewardship System (CLASS) – Asheville, NC [NOAA]•Energia Logistics Ltd. – Long Beach, CA•Environment Canada – Downsview, Ontario•Environmental Satellite Processing Center – Suitland, MD [NOAA]•European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) – Darmstadt, Germany•Harris Corporation – Melbourne , FL•Honeywell Aerospace Electronic Systems – Redmond, WA•Hong Kong Observatory – Kowloon, Hong Kong•ImpactWeather, Inc. – Houston, TX•ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation – Tokyo, Japan•Johnson Space Center Spaceflight Meteorology Group – Houston, TX•Kwajalein Atoll - Atmospheric Technology Services Company – Kwajalein Atoll

•Masdar Institute of Science and Technology – Abu Dhabi, UAE•Mexico National Water Commission – Mexico D.F., Mexico•NASA Langley Research Center – Hampton, VA•NASA Marshall Space Flight Center – Huntsville, AL•National Hurricane Center – Miami, FL [NOAA]•National Transportation Safety Board – Washington, DC•National Weather Service Pacific Region Headquarters – Honolulu, HI [NOAA]•National Weather Service Western Region Headquarters – Salt Lake City, UT [NOAA]•Northrop Grumman Information Systems – McLean, VA•Range Weather Operations, Cape Canaveral Air Station – Patrick Air Force Base, FL•Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology, Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere – Fort Collins, CO [NOAA]•Storm Prediction Center – Norman, OK [NOAA]•Telvent DTN – Burnsville, MN•Unidata Program Center – Boulder, CO•University of Wisconsin - Madison, Space Science & Engineering Center – Madison, WI•VisionTech, Inc. – Ibaraki, Japan•Weather Central, LP – Madison, WI•Weather Decision Technologies, Inc. – Norman, OK•Weathernews America, Inc. – Norman, OK•WTVT Fox 13 Weather – Tampa, FL

On 6 December 1966, the Applications Technology Satellite (ATS-1) was launched. We have had the benefit of the

geostationary perspective for over 45 years!

ATS-1's spin scan camera (UW’s Suomi and Parent 1968) provided full disk visible images of the earth and its cloud cover every 20 minutes. The spin scan camera on ATS-1 occurred because of extraordinary efforts by Verner Suomi and Homer Newell, when the satellite was already well into its fabrication.

Verner E. Suomi and Robert J. Parent

ATS-3 1967-Nov-18 15:03Z

Professor Suomi and McIDAS(Man computer Interactive Data Access System)

1972 – “McIDAS” 2012 – “McIDAS-V”Including VIS-AD and HYDRA

an

Water vapor tracked “winds” from Meteosat during FGGE (the First Global Atmospheric Research

Program (GARP) Global Experiment)

(15 Nov 1979)

1968WINDCO generates wind vectors from ATS images

1972First Generation of McIDAS Runs on Harris /5 with 96 KB of programmable memory and 2-5 MB hard drives

1976GOES ingest system added to McIDAS

1979Wichita Falls, TX tornado disaster: Congress directs operational McIDAS system to be installed at the NOAA National Severe Storms Forecast Center

1983People’s Republic of China funds port of McIDAS software to IBM mainframe

1985McIDAS runs on PCs under DOS operating system

1987McIDAS runs on PCs under OS/2 operating systemand McIDAS Users’ Group is formed

1991McIDAS runs on UNIX workstations

1994Satellite and conventional data is served from UNIX workstations, beginning the use of ADDE (Abstract Data Distribution Environment)

1997McIDAS Users’ Group sunsets support for mainframe McIDAS

History of McIDAS

1970 1980 1990 2000

IBMMainframe

History of McIDASMainframe Communication

NOAAPORTSignal

Clients

Servers

History of McIDASADDE Client-Server Communication(Abstract Data Distribution Environment)

History of McIDAS-V

• 2006 - Investigations of a “new approach” to data analysis and visualization

• 2007 – Collaboration with Unidata to advance VisAD and IDV as the basis of McIDAS-V

• 2008 – McIDAS-V becomes an “alpha” • 2009 – January – beta 1• 2010 – January – beta 5• 2010 – September – V1.0

• 2012 – May – V1.2 (scripting capability demonstrated and promoted)

Convection case study:19 June 2007

MODIS data - define a transect to

display radiance measurements

Meteorological Satellites and Instruments (2012)

GOES-13

- Imager

- Sounder

75 W

GOES-12

- Imager

- Sounder

60 W

GOES-15

- Imager

- Sounder

135 W

Terra

- MODIS

10:30

Aqua

- MODIS

- AIRS

13:30

Meteosat-8

MSG-2

- SEVIRI

10 E

MTSAT-2

Imager

145 E

NOAA-18

- AVHRR/3

- HIRS/4

- AMSU

- MHS

14:00

NOAA-19

- AVHRR/3

- HIRS/4

- AMSU

- MHS

14:00

~ 3

6,0

00

km

~ 8

50

km

PMAM

NOAA-17

- AVHRR/3

- HIRS/3

- AMSU

09:30

METOP-A

- AVHRR/3

- HIRS/4

- IASI

- AMSU

- MHS

09:30

Meteosat-7

MSG-1

- MVIRI

57 E

[sats-o-day-gsw-20120621.ppt]

DMSP

F-17

- SSM/IS

05:30

DMSP

F-18

- SSM/IS

08:00

SuomiNPP

- VIIRS

- CrIS

- ATMS

13:30

CIMSS Cloud Top Pressure

Setvak:http://www.convection-wg.org/sandwich.phpBrunner et al.: http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/snaap/enhanced-v

Thunderstorm features: over-shooting top and enhanced-V (thermal couplet)

AIRS Level 1B window channel image (grey-scale) and moveable 2-D slice of ECMWF-AIRS Single FOV water-vapor retrieval (color-scale). Slice values are re-sampled on the fly from the

3-D difference field and auto-updated as the slice is dragged in space - demonstrating interactive direct manipulation, data integration, and python driven data computation.

Advanced Display Capability

Bringing observations of clouds together:MODIS (passive) and CALIPSO (active)

AMV derived wind color scaled by wind speed ; GFS gridded wind field in magenta

Under development: interrogation of vertical structure of surrounding reference winds model analysis and/or in-situ obs at location of flagged AMV derived wind.

Fundamental CIMSS research: striving to make quality real-time GOES Sounder radiance observations into practical useful information for

weather forecasting

Atmospheric continuity and evolution are clearly evident

in multi-spectral

animation.

Where will clouds be? Comparison between

observed imagery (bottom) and forecast imagery (top) builds confidence in how

well the CRAS model is assimilating

retrieved GOES Sounder cloud and

moisture information.

Where will forecast (GFS) moisture need to be modified, monitoring trends, to provide a

better forecast for convection (as across Texas)? Differences between retrieved

GOES Sounder TPW and the GFS forecast values are plotted over the GOES TPW

Derived Product Imagery (DPI).

[1800 UT 2 Apr 2004]

Atmospheric soundings from geostationary orbit

Below is total precipitable water (TPW) derived from the Sounder on GOES-13 at 12 UTC on 21 Jun 2012.

As a cold front moves across GrtLks and Cen Plns, dry air fills in across N Plns as moist air (previously advected from the Gulf of Mexico region) remains over most of rest of E US.Smooth GOES retrievals (profiles) are similar to near-by radiosonde profiles.

[ http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/realtime/eus/begin-eus.html ]

“Sift and Winnow” – a Wisconsin idea