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McIDAS-X and -XCD 2015.2 Fastrack Versions
Now Available

29 December 2015 McIDAS Help Desk email notification to McIDAS Site Coordinators and the mcidas-users list:

McIDAS-X Fastrack version 2015.2 was recently added to the McIDAS Website.

This is a large release with many changes. The following seven items are ones in the longer list of significant changes available here.

  • Changed support of McIDAS-X on Apple, Red Hat and Sun/Oracle systems as follows:
    • On Apple Mac OS X systems, changed support from 10.7 and 10.8 to 10.8, 10.9 and 10.10.
    • On Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, changed support from 5.2 PPC, 5.7 Intel and 6.1 Intel
      to 5.11 Intel and 6.7 Intel.
    • No longer support McIDAS-X on Solaris 10 OS x86 systems. Support on Solaris 10 OS SPARC systems continues, but only for builds with gcc/gfortran compilers.
  • Added preliminary release versions of INSAT-3D servers to allow creation of INSAT-3D datasets. These are not the final release; most of the remaining issues are calibration-related and we are waiting for further calibration updates from the data provider. The three servers are INDI, which uses calibration lookup tables; INST, which uses coefficients found in the data stream; and INDS, which is for sounder data.
  • Updated Himawari servers to accommodate missing segments, remove duplicate information when listing Japan sector images, work correctly with large negative MAG= values, produce the correct output size when MAG= is used with SIZE=SAME, and write correct value for Words 46 and 47 of Area files created with IMGCOPY.
  • Added Kalpana Level 1b HDF5 and native format MSG Level 1.5 servers to allow creation of their datasets on local and remote servers, and display or manipulation of the data using the IMG* commands. See the DSSERVE command documentation in the McIDAS User's Guide or its online help for information about creating the datasets.
  • Added new IMGPARM command, which is used to create a multi-band image of parameters useful for creating composites. The command was formerly in the McIDAS-XRD package but is now in McIDAS-X. See the IMGPARM command documentation in the McIDAS User's Guide or its online help for details
  • Increased the value of MAXGRIDPT from 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 in gridparm.inc and mcidas.h and added call to setrlimit in grib2func.c so the GRD* commands (GRDCOPY, GRDDISP, etc.) on all platforms but Windows 7 now work with grids containing up to 10 million points.
  • Updated GRDCOPY, GRDDISP, GRDIMG, GRDINFO and GRDLIST commands to have the LEV= keyword match on both MB and HPA for units of pressure, regardless of which is specified. If units are specified in LEV=, the output units (e.g., in GRDLIST's listing, GRDDISP's plot/contour label, and GRDCOPY's output grid) will be those specified rather than the native units. Also, a new keyword, PUNIT=, was added to let you specify the preferred output pressure units (MB or HPA) for all levels so that if multiple levels are required you don't have to list all of them in the LEV= keyword.

McIDAS User Services issues its McIDAS-X software updates via fully-supported Fastrack releases (including online documentation updates). This means that the software is fully supported by SSEC, and that each change to the software has been tested on all of the supported workstation configurations. Full system testing occurs at least once on each platform during each calendar year.

If you have questions about this release, call the McIDAS Help Desk at (608) 262-2455, or send email to the Help Desk.


08 January 2016 McIDAS Help Desk email notification to McIDAS-XCD Site Coordinators:

McIDAS-XCD Fastrack version 2015.2 was recently added to the McIDAS Website.

The significant changes for McIDAS-XCD version 2015.2 include the following:

  • Updated the station database (file STNDB.CORE) in McIDAS-X 2015.2 to include more than new 200 GFSMOS/NAMMOS stations, matching what's seen at the NOAA Meteorological Development Lab's GFS MOS, NAM MOS, and GFS stations pages.
  • Updated the GFSMOS and NAMMOS decoders to work properly with station IDs that include a number (e.g., K1V4).
  • Added several fixes and enhancements to the PIREP decoder. The updates include adding a FEW category for sky cover; adding a SKC (sky clear) category for sky cover; and improved decoding of sky cover and cloud levels as dictated by incoming data.
  • Updated the SHIP/BUOY decoder to write as many as 5,000 columns to the ISHP-schema MD files.
  • Added file RMXCDGRIB2015_2.BAT to remove obsolete RTGRIDS datasets. Files XCDNOAAPORTGRID.BAT and XCDCONDUITGRID.BAT were updated with several new RTGRIDS datasets. See steps 8, 9 and 10 in the instructions to complete this procedure, and see the xcd_README_2015.2 file for the complete list of datasets added and removed from the RTGRIDS datasets.
  • Increased the number of lines read by the RAOB decoder so that the RAOBRPT command can properly display the full messages that start with MANGRB and SGLGRB.

McIDAS User Services issues its McIDAS-X software updates via fully-supported Fastrack releases (including online documentation updates). This means that the software is fully supported by SSEC, and that each change to the software has been tested on all of the supported workstation configurations. Full system testing occurs at least once on each platform during each calendar year.

If you have questions about this release, call the McIDAS Help Desk at (608) 262-2455, or send email to the Help Desk.

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