An introduction to McIDAS – the M an- c omputer I nteractive D ata A ccess S ystem

1. An introduction to McIDAS– the Man-computer Interactive Data Access System (as part of the 19th Annual CIMSS High School Workshop on Atmospheric and Earth Sciences – 27 Jun 2011) 10:45 AM - McIDAS overview (Gary); McIDAS-V training (Jay) <lunch> 01:30 PM - McIDAS hands-on development of mini-project (with mentors: Bob, Dave, Joleen, Kaba, and Will) <break> 03:20 PM - student presentations of our mini-projects (all)

2. 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).

3. 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

4. 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-section Same overshooting tops, rotated to view from the side

5. What Is McIDAS-V? 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

6. On 6 December 1966, the Applications Technology Satellite (ATS-1) was launched. We have had the benefit of the geostationary perspective for over 40 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.

7. Verner E. Suomi and Robert J. Parent

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

9. Professor Suomi and McIDAS (Man computer Interactive Data Access System) an 1972 – “McIDAS” 2011 – “McIDAS-V” Including VIS-AD and HYDRA

10. Water vapor tracked “winds” from Meteosat during FGGE (the First Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP) Global Experiment) (15 Nov 1979)

11. 1968 WINDCO generates wind vectors from ATS images History of McIDAS 1972 First Generation of McIDAS Runs on Harris /5 with 96 KB of programmable memory and 2-5 MB hard drives 1991 McIDAS runs on UNIX workstations 1997 McIDAS Users’ Group sunsets support for mainframe McIDAS 1983 People’s Republic of China funds port of McIDAS software to IBM mainframe 1970 1980 1990 2000 1976 GOES ingest system added to McIDAS 1994 Satellite and conventional data is served from UNIX workstations, beginning the use of ADDE (Abstract Data Distribution Environment) 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 1987 McIDAS runs on PCs under OS/2 operating system and McIDAS Users’ Group is formed

12. 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

13. IBM Mainframe History of McIDASMainframe Communication

14. NOAAPORT Signal Servers Clients History of McIDASADDE Client-Server Communication(Abstract Data Distribution Environment)

15. CIMSS Cloud Top Pressure

16. MODIS data - define a transect to display radiance measurements Convection case study:19 June 2007

17. 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

18. 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.

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

21. 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