An introduction to McIDAS – the
Man-computer Interactive Data Access
System
(as part of the 22st Annual CIMSS Summer Workshop on Atmospheric
and Earth Sciences – 23 June 2014)
10:30 AM – 12:30 PM
- McIDAS/satellite overview (Gary); McIDAS-V training (Jay and Bob).
- McIDAS hands-on development of mini-projects (w/additional mentors
Rick, Will, Barry, and Mat)
<lunch>
01:15 PM – 02:15 PM
- review McIDAS mini-projects, concluding with student presentations of such.
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).
What Is McIDAS-V?
Storm cloud temperatures, showing
overshooting tops in 2-D from above
Same overshooting tops,
rotated to view from the side
Satellite composite image overlaid with
GFS relative humidity contour cross-section
McIDAS
– Man computer Interactive Data Access System
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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
What Is McIDAS-V?
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McIDAS-X  VisAD + IDV + HYDRA = McIDAS-V
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 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)
an
1972 – “McIDAS”
2014 – “McIDAS-V”
Including VIS-AD and HYDRA
Water vapor tracked “winds” from Meteosat during FGGE (the
First Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP) Global
Experiment)
(15 Nov 1979)
1972
First Generation of
McIDAS
Runs on Harris /5 with
96 KB of programmable
memory and 2-5 MB
hard drives
History of McIDAS
1970
1991
McIDAS runs on
1983
People’s Republic of China UNIX
workstations
funds port of McIDAS
software to IBM mainframe
1980
1976
GOES ingest
system added to
McIDAS
1968
WINDCO
generates wind
vectors from ATS
images
1990
1985
McIDAS runs on
PCs under DOS
operating system
1979
Wichita Falls, TX tornado
disaster: Congress directs
operational McIDAS system
to be installed at the NOAA
National Severe Storms
Forecast Center
1997
McIDAS Users’
Group sunsets
support for
mainframe
McIDAS
2000
1994
Satellite and conventional
data is served from UNIX
workstations, beginning the
use of ADDE (Abstract Data
Distribution Environment)
1987
McIDAS runs on
PCs under OS/2
operating system
and McIDAS
Users’ Group is
formed
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)
• 2014 – June – latest version is V1.4
(Some) Meteorological Satellites and Instruments (2014)
~ 36,000 km -- 24 hrs
Eastern
Hemisphere:
MTSAT-2
GOES-15
GOES-14
GOES-13
GOES-12
(Himawari-7)
- Imager
- Imager
- Imager
- Imager
- Sounder
- Sounder
105 W
75 W
Imager
- Sounder
145 E
135 W
Meteosat-10
MSG-2
X
- SEVIRI
- Sounder
~ 850 km -- 100 min
Kalpana
0E
60 W
FY-2D,E
COMS-1
MTSAT-1R
AM
- AVHRR/3
INSAT-3A,3B,3D
Electro-L
GEO
LEO
Metop-A
Meteosat-8,7
Metop-B
- AVHRR/3
DMSP
DMSP
F-17
F-18
- SSM/IS
- SSM/IS
05:30
08:00
- HIRS/4
- HIRS/4
- IASI
- IASI
Terra
Aqua
- AMSU
- AMSU
- MODIS
- MODIS
- MHS
- MHS
10:30
- AIRS
09:30
09:30
Suomi NPP
- AVHRR/3
- VIIRS
- HIRS/4
- CrIS
- AMSU
- ATMS
- MHS
13:30
13:30
NOAA-18
15:00
NOAA-19
- AVHRR/3
- HIRS/4
- AMSU
- MHS
13:30
PM
(http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/sat/satellitestatus.php)
[ sats-o-day-gsw-20140620.pptx ]
MODIS data define a transect to display
radiance measurements
Convection case study:
19 June 2007
CIMSS Cloud Top Pressure
Thunderstorm features: over-shooting top and enhanced-V (thermal couplet)
Setvak:http://www.convection-wg.org/sandwich.php
Brunner et al.: http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/snaap/enhanced-v
Advanced Display Capability
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.
High spectral data from AIRS
(onboard the Aqua satellite) is
used to generate the UW Cloud
Amount Vertical Profile (CAVP),
shown as a “3-D” cloud in
McIDAS-V .
Bringing observations of clouds together:
MODIS (passive) and CALIPSO (active)
Under development: interrogation of vertical structure of surrounding reference
winds model analysis and/or in-situ obs at location of flagged AMV derived wind.
AMV derived wind color scaled by wind speed ; GFS gridded wind field in magenta
Infrared electromagnetic spectrum of the atmosphere
Spectral response functions
for the 18 infrared GOES
Sounder bands, separated
into long, mid, and
shortwave sections.
Incoming solar radiation peaks in the visible, near 0.5 um (corresponding to a
radiative temperature of 5780K for the Sun’s surface); outgoing terrestrial radiation
peaks in the infrared, near 11 um (corresponding to an average earth radiative
temperature of 255K). [ from Wein’s Law] Various gaseous constituents effect the
amount of absorption at the different wavelengths.
All spectral bands of the GOES Sounder
( GOES-13 (East) at 15:46 UTC on 23 June 2013 )
Looking at real-time GOES Sounder data…
cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/rt/exp-work.php
1. Look at all spectral bands
2. Look at a Sounder product
[This workshop PowerPoint is available at -http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/~garyw/sum-wrkshp/2014/.]
Atmospheric soundings from
geostationary orbit
Below is total precipitable
water (TPW) derived from the
Sounder on GOES-13 at 12 UTC
on 23Jun 2013.
As a cold front drops
across the N Hi Plains
bringing drier air, the E
and rest of the central US
stay under very moist air
(previously advected from
the Gulf of Mexico region)
as a warm front moves up
across the Great Lakes.
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