MetCal and the SPA / News: Recent posts

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v1.8.0) was released on 26 July 2011. This package contains a number of important improvements, including the use of direct mapping rather than interpolation when E-grid (rotated lat/lon) RPN Standard files are used for plotting. Support for optional "cutoff" times has been added to observational file processing, which allows for fuzzy matching of dates/times for observational data. The trajectory calculator has been improved: in particular, a bug in the positional weights calculation has been fixed. As well, a new calculator for the Wilcox rank-sum test has been added to the statistical component of the package.

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v1.7.1) was released on 27 June 2008. This package contains a bugfix that prevents an undefined reference to hasTictacs() when the package is being compiled without RMNLIB support. For users with librmn.a installed, this fix has no impact on the installation or functionality of the package.

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v1.7.0) was released on 27 June 2008. This package contains a number of important uprades and bug fixes. Many of these relate to handling of sub-hourly time increments in the timer, and a set of query functions related to RPN Standard files. The "type" value of RPN files has changed in settings.cfg from "old" or "new" (depending on the style of grid description - latlon or tictac, respectively) to "fst" (fichier standard). A new set of eddy energetics calculators have also been added to the package. A bug was found and corrected in the derivative calculation on limited area grids. The correction of this bug will change the value of derivative-based diagnostics on all limited area grids, but will not affect diagnostics on global grids using SpherePack calculators. For this reason, it is suggested that all users upgrade to v1.7.0 as soon as possible.

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v1.6.1) was released on 4 February 2008. A set of upgrades for the new date and level handling in RPN standard files have been implemented. These make use of existing subprograms in the RPN library to simplify the interface with the standard files. An optimization has been performed on the gridpoint locator (sub_grptLocator.f90) that dramatically improves its performance. Additionally, definition of the BURP format now includes an explicit reference to the desired BURP decoding chart, which can be in either NCEP or CMC flavours. An upgrade to the trajectory calculation uses Julian Day rather than a timer offset to compute the step size, and an eddy APE calculator (RHS terms) has been added.

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v1.6.0) was released on 5 November 2007. A set of minor bug fixes relating to the PV inversion algorithm and NCAR Graphics API are present in this release. More importantly, however, an observational file API layer has been added, with support for the BURP file type from RPN. This allows the user to easily access observational data and compare it to the gridded data already handled by the MetCal/SPA package. A data filling algorithm has also been added in response to a need to fill missing pressure-coordinate data for regions below the ground and above a model lid.

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v1.5.2) was released on 20 March 2007. A pair of minor bug fixes have been implemented in this release. One deals with the handling of surface-level data in RPN Standard Files, and the other fixes a problem in the computation of the axis of dilatation (deformation). RPN Standard Files with surface-level data and 3D data are now handled by ignoring all fields with ip1=0 or ip1=12000, regardless whether the files are in 'old' or 'new' format. The axis of dilatation is now correctly rotated for a mean resultant deformation D<0, rather than the original formulation of thedeformation calculation that did the rotation for D>0. This is now consistent with the counter-clockwise rotation of the axes during the calculation of the deformation components. The result of the deformation calculation has now been verified with both idealized and real cases.

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v1.5.2) was released on 9 March 2007. A pair of minor bug fixes have been implemented in this release. One deals with the ability of the plotting interface (NCAR Graphics API) to withstand multiple simultaneous plotting errors - including algorithm failures - earlier versions did not permit recovery following chaings of such severe errors. The other modification removes a band of missing values that could occur along the boundaries of the topographic field. This error was a result of machine precision problems that resulted in minute extrapolation at some boundaries.

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v1.5.1) was released on 18 February 2007. A minor bug has been fixed in the NCAR Graphics API. An uninitialized value is used to test for memory management before the plotting of background fields. With optimization, this can occasionally lead to a failture to plot colour map backgrounds. Only those users utilizing the NCAR Graphics API should be affected by this upgrade.

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v1.5.0) was released on 7 February 2007. This release contains numerous additions, bug fixes, and upgrades over the previous (v1.4.x) releases. Several new plotting subprograms have been added, some of which provide lower-level control over the plot process (individual line drawing, area filling, and text annotation), others of which provide high-level functionality (hurricane summary pinwheel plots and page layout automation). The functionality of the timeLoop constructor has been changed, although its interface remains the same. Using linked lists, this provides a more robust way to access dates/times from a main program and allows multiple timer instances to coexist. Calculations of the Power Dissipation and moisture convergence are also included in the archive.

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v1.4.2) was released on 13 April 2006. This release contains a number of minor bug fixes and several important feature enhancements and additions. A set of Julian/Gregorian date converters now allows for rapid manipulation of date data in the internal format of each specific file type as well as in general user format. An addition to the NCAR Graphics API now allows for basic calculations and plotting on a storm-centered cylindrical coordinate, in which the pole of the globe is effectively rotated onto the location of choice (usually the centre of the system of interest). Bug fixes included a NCAR Graphics garbage collection (cleanup) variable that was left undefined, resulting in a failure to plot map backgrounds on some systems.

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v.1.4.1) was released on 13 Febrary 2006. This release contains a number of bug fixes and minor feature enhancements. In particular, the interface to the sounding plotter has been synchronized with the NCAR Graphics API and a bug has been fixed in the relative humidity computation. The file opening method for GEMPAK files has been updated as required for compatibility with GEMPAK libraries v5.9.1 and the vertical coordinates for GEMPAK output files from the MetCal GUI have been updated to include THTA and PVOR values. Numerous more minor changes have also been made to solve minor build and runtime errors that were generated by new Intel FORTRAN compilers.

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v1.4.0) was released 22 December 2005. This release contains a number of minor bug fixes, the most important of which is in the trajectory computation algorithm. The map scale factor was being applied incorrectly, resulting in small but non-negligible errors in the trajectory path that could at times become important. The reason for the minor version increment with this release centeres on the decoding of the internal date/time format within the SPA. Original decoding was to a length 5 integer vector (year,month,day,hour,forecast); this has been replaced by a length 7 vector (year,month,day,hour,minute,second,forecast) in order to support sub-hourly time increments. Although this change has no direct effect on users, code written using the date decoder may need minor modifications (vector length and forecast ordering - now referenced by index 7 rather than index 5). It was, unfortunately, impossible to maintain seamless backwards compatibility because generic subprograms cannot be identified by output vector lengths.

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v1.3.6) was released 22 March 2005. This release contains several important updates and bug fixes from the previous release. A potential vorticity inversion subprogram (essentially that of Chris Davis) has been added to the archive. Also, a set of trajectory calculation and trajectory plotting plotting routines enhance the functionality of the SPA. Several bug fixes have been made in the NCAR Graphics interface and a line drawing subprogram has been added. The functionality of the tropical cyclone identification algorithm has been enhanced by computing a central position based on both a local maximum in the vorticity field and a maximal area-averaged value.

A new version of the MRG MetCal/SPA package (v1.3.5) was released 25 January 2005. This release contains several important updates and new implementations including expanded grid projection handling capabilities (refined map scale factor computations), spherical computations for global rectangular grids (using an interface to NCAR Spherepack) and graphical image generation (using an interface to NCAR Graphics). These updates have improved both the speed and the accuracy of the interface, especially for global domains.

A new version of the MetCal/SPA package (v1.1.0) was released on 10 September 2003. The major modifications to v1.1.0 of the package centre on handling of the RPN Standard File type. Sub-hourly input increments are now supported as the indexing for the time vector for model output now relies on step number rather than IP1 (forecast hour). Indexing for analysis input has not been modified, since sub-hourly analysis outputs seem ulikely to arise in the near future.... read more

The first public release of the MetCal and the SPA (v1.0.0) was made 1 August 2003 by the Mesoscale Research Group (MRG) at McGill University. The Shared Procedure Archive (SPA) is a diagnostics resource for researchers in the atmospheric sciences. The platform-independent package is composed of numerous computational routines accessible to the end user through the MetCal GUI. The SPA is intended to be completely transparent to users and developers, with a series of utilities comprising the text-based developer's interface aiding in the task of library extension. Some of the diagnostics currently available in the SPA are: CAPE calculations, cyclone tracking algorithm, Q-vector plotting, hurricane vortex bogusing (using a modified version of Kurihara's well-tested algorithm), dynamic tropopause computations, equivalent potential temperature conversions, interpolation algorithms, and tunable smoothing filters. Many more functions are available to end-users through the easily-navigable MetCal GUI.... read more