Version 4.4 Updates
Change of default Metview versions on ecgate
Done on 2014-11-26 (ecgate only)
Command metview now launches metview4
Commands metview_new and metview_test now launch metview4_new
Command metview_old now launches metview4_old
Commands metview3, metview3_test and metview3_old are still available for running Metview 3
See Metview at ECMWF for details of the version names
User Version 4.4.10
Upgrade 2014-10-08 (Linux desktops, lxab cluster, ecgate)
Version 4.4.10 became User Version (command metview or metview4 on ecgate) at ECMWF
Export Version 4.4.10
External release 2014-10-01
Version 4.4.10-export became available. See the Releases page for download.
Test Version 4.4.10
Introduced 2014-10-01 (Linux desktops, lxab cluster, ecgb)
At ECMWF:
Installed as metview4_new
Built with Magics 2.23.1.
Built with GRIB_API 1.12.3
Built with ODB_API version 0.9.31
Built with emoslib 000396
Cross Section and Average: parameter Interpolate Values is no longer available in the user interface, as Metview will always compute the result on the actual vertical levels of the input data, without applying any vertical interpolation. The only exception is when there is a need to convert model level to pressure level data. In this case, model level and LNSP data are required and the algorithm to compute the set of target pressure level values has been changed. Previously, these levels were computed by taking a fixed number of evenly spaced intervals between the top and bottom pressure. This led to a lack of detail in the upper atmosphere. The new scheme computes the set of target pressure level values as follows: for each input model level, compute the average pressure from all points on that level.
Cross Section and Average: better handling of missing values from the input data
Hovmoeller: better handling of missing values from the input data
Build: fixed issue which could cause the Metview build to fail on Fedora 20 (and maybe other) systems; the symptom is the following error message during the last stage of compilation:
convert: unrecognized color `snow1’ @ warning/color.c/GetColorCompliance/947.
Test Version 4.4.9
Introduced 2014-09-08 (Linux desktops, lxab cluster, ecgb)
At ECMWF:
Installed as metview4_new
Built with Magics 2.23.1.
Built with GRIB_API 1.12.3
Built with ODB_API version 0.9.31
Built with emoslib 000396
Reprojection: now copies more meta-data (e.g. satellite and channel ID) from input to output GRIB
Grib Examiner: now works on MARS icons which return satellite imagery
User Interface: now recognises JPEG, GIF and TIFF as icon types
Desktop: improvements in Metview’s new user interface (invoked by adding -desktop to the Metview command line)
Right-click | ‘Save result’ now works on MARS icons which return satellite imagery
Icon editors: colour list editor now displays correctly when disabled
Export Version 4.4.8
External release 2014-08-13
Version 4.4.8-export became available.
Spectra: the Spectra module has been re-instated in Metview 4, providing the same level of functionality as Metview 3 (it is intended to expand this in the future)
Weather Room: added facilities for analysts to send plots to the Weather Room video wall and to synchronise plots between Metview and the wall (ECMWF only)
Thermo View: new icon for handling the view parameters of thermodynamic diagrams (the ability to drag and drop data into this view has yet to be implemented)
Fonts: updated the visual definition icons to provide the full list of Magics fonts (was Serif and SansSerif, is now Arial, Courier, Helvetica, Times, Serif, SansSerif and Symbol). The icons affected are Axis Plotting, Coastlines, Contouring, Legend, Symbol Plotting and Text Plotting. Please note: in line with a change in Magics, parameter Symbol Text Font Name has been changed to Symbol Text Font. This might affect macros or icons which set the old parameter.
Macro: extended the nearest_gridpoint_info() Macro function to include the distance of the found point from the target point
Cross Section: it was not possible to create a cross section (or some other types of derived data) from an experimental GRIB where the parameter’s shortName is not alpha-numeric, e.g. “~” or is missing; this has been fixed
Cross Section: now properly handles missing values when converting from model levels to pressure levels
Reprojection: now takes missing values in the input GRIB file into account
Reprojection: now copies meta-data (e.g. date, time, paramId) from input to output GRIB
Grib To Geopoints: fixed issue where some GRIB 2 files could not be converted because of differences in GRIB_API keys between GRIB 1 and 2
Lambert: fixed issue where Lambert grids stored in GRIB 2 could not be interpreted because of differences in GRIB_API keys between GRIB 1 and 2
Grib Examiner: fixed issue where occasionally the last-used profile was not remembered between sessions
Desktop: many improvements in Metview’s new user interface (invoked by adding -desktop to the Metview command line)
added an advanced icon search dialogue
fixed issue where the editing of a floating-point number in an icon editor caused the decimal point to disappear (still to be fixed when editing a list of numbers)
improvement in layout of icons on the first visit to a given folder
fixed issue where icon drop boxes in editors were not greyed out when not needed
the e-mailing of icons is now more robust when the message contains special characters
the icon output log no longer misinterprets certain characters as HTML codes
bookmarks are now saved as soon as they are modified
colour-selection helper improved when choosing a colour from the colour grid
fixed issue where the text cursor did sometimes not appear when renaming an icon (only when built with Qt 4.8)
fixed issue where some ‘family editor’ icons could not be edited
relaxed a case-sensitive check when switching the icon editor back from text mode
the Display Window icon editor now correctly displays the page size (e.g. A3/A4)
improved file scanning when figuring out an icon’s type
useful graphical icons are displayed in the host system’s task bar
implemented the Empty Wastebasket action
in icon editors, the ‘clear text’ button is now highlighted when the mouse cursor hovers over it
we would like as much feedback as possible on the new interface before we make it the default version!
Documentation: documented the following icons: Cross Section Data, Cross Section View, Average Data, Average View, Vertical Profile Data, Vertical Profile View, Hovmoeller Data, Hovmoeller View
Wind: removed the Streamlines options from the Wind Plotting icon until this feature is fully implemented
Build: fixed configure option –with-wmo-code
Test Version 4.4.7
Introduced 2014-05-13 (Linux desktops, lxab cluster, ecgb)
At ECMWF:
Installed as metview4_new
Built with Magics 2.23.0.
Built with GRIB_API 1.12.1
Built with ODB_API version 0.9.31
Built with emoslib 000394
Desktop: Metview’s experimental new user interface (enabled with -desktop on the command line) has had many small fixes
Macro: function nearest_gridpoint_info() returns an additional member: index, which gives the (1-based) index of the found point in the data array
Grib Examiner: now correctly displays the messages in a GRIB file which is the result of enabling sorting in the Grib Filter icon
Grib Examiner: for convenience, now creates a user-writeable copy of the default key profile on startup
WMS: fixed an issue where wrong proxy settings were enabled when built outside ECMWF
MARS: creation of new Mars Retrieval icons is now enabled outside ECMWF when the Mars Web API access is available
Test Version 4.4.6
Introduced 2014-04-29 (Linux desktops, lxab cluster, ecgb)
At ECMWF:
Installed as metview4_new
Built with Magics 2.23.0.
Built with GRIB_API 1.12.0
Built with ODB_API version 0.9.31
Built with emoslib 000394
Tephigrams: new module - Thermo Data - for generating thermodynamic diagrams; plot customisation will be available later, now it is possible only with some Macro code
VAPOR: new module (VAPOR Prepare) to prepare data for visualisation with the 3D package VAPOR. See 3D visualisation with VAPOR for more information, including a tutorial
Geo View: added Mercator projection
NetCDF: added the facility to plot XY Vectors in the NetCDF Visualiser icon
Grib Examiner: added statistics to the list of namespaces for the namespace dump mode
NetCDF: fixed case where visualisation of netCDF geographical matrices caused a crash
NetCDF: at ECMWF, the NetCDF Examiner now uses the netCDF 4 ncdump in its Ncdump panel (although Metview was already linked with the netCDF 4 library, it was calling the default version of ncdump for this purpose)
SCM: fixed an issue where calling the Scm Run icon could cause later problems in the Metview user interface
SCM: fixed an issue in the SCM profile editor where the corresponding table column was not selected when switching between parameters
Geo View: fixed issue where the geographical area was restricted to be 360° at the right-hand edge
Geo View: fixed issue where replacing a Map View with a Geographical View (or vice-versa) was disallowed
Macro: fixed an issue where calling values(geopoints) returned a vector of values even if the geopoints values were of type string; it now returns a list of strings in this case
Macro: fixed issue where the Observation Filter did not work if a Display Window had been defined beforehand
Macro: fixed issue where automatic generation of a Macro from a plot derived from a Simple Formula icon failed
Macro Editor: background has been slightly dimmed to help prevent eyestrain; this should be user-configurable in the future
Desktop: Metview’s experimental new user interface (enabled with -desktop on the command line) has seen many improvements
Test Version 4.4.5
Introduced 2014-03-03 (Linux desktops, lxab cluster, ecgb)
At ECMWF:
Installed as metview4_new
Built with Magics 2.23.0.
Built with GRIB_API 1.11.0
Built with ODB_API version 0.9.31
Built with emoslib 000394
Display Window: fixed issue where plotting a map with Coastlines switched off could cause a crash
Display Window: now recognises 100u/100v as wind vector components and will automatically plot as wind vectors
Observation Plotting: a new Observation Plotting icon has been created directly from the available Magics++ parameters. This replaces the Metview 3 Observation Plotting icon, as many of the parameters are different. The macro function is mobs().
Cartesian View: fixed error when setting both parameters X_AUTOMATIC = on and X_AXIS_TYPE = date
Cross Section: problem with the orography curve has been fixed
Vertical Profile: internal update to how the resulting netCDF variables are named
Examiners: the data examiners have been updated so that they can once again be invoked from the command line with the -e option
SCM: the Single Column Model interface has been updated so that invoking the SCM with two icons simultaneously works without a clash
RTTOV: the default channel files are now somewhere safe, and not stored in a volatile location
MARS: added latest definition files
MARS: improvements for accessing ECMWF’s MARS archive from a Metview built outside ECMWF
MARS: improvements for accessing ECMWF’s MARS archive via the Web API - the Dataset parameter is now visible in the Mars Retrieval icon (see also A guide for new users)
Macro: mvl_geopotential_on_ml has been updated to avoid the use of deprecated functions
Test Version 4.4.4
Introduced 2014-01-22 (Linux desktops, lxab cluster, ecgb)
At ECMWF:
Installed as metview4_new
Built with Magics 2.23.0.
Built with GRIB_API 1.11.0
Built with ODB_API version 0.9.31
Built with emoslib 000394
Display Window: fixed issue where the Cursor Data panel was not updated when the displayed frame was changed
FLEXTRA: fixed issue where running in CET mode failed
Meteogram: local meteogram generation now enabled on all platforms (internal to ECMWF)
Cross Section: can now plot the result of a Cross Section Data macro call in a Cross Section View (similarly for Average Data, Vertical Profile Data and Hovmoeller Data)
Cross Section: small fixes. Now, if a model level to pressure level conversion is required, Interpolate Values is automatically set to Yes. The algorithm for finding an LNSP field to use has become less strict: try first to find a LNSP field with the same date/time/expver of the given ML fieldset. If not found, find the first LNSP field in the fieldset.
Observations: fixed unwanted pop-up message about observation grouping
Macro: unary functions such as sin and log have been added to netCDF processing, e.g. new_nc = sin(nc) . See: NetCDF Functions
Macro: automatic generation of a macro from a Map View fixed (previously did not honour the geographic region selected)
Macro: macro library function mvl_geoline has been revised so that its input parameters are more sensible and so that it can work when given a line with the endpoints at the same longitude. Previously the input parameters were left_lon, right_lon, top_lat, bot_lat.
Now they are lat1,lon1,lat2,lon2 - coordinates of the two end-points of the line in lat/lon. This means that existing macros which call this function will no longer give the correct result unless their code is changed!
Macro: the macro which is automatically-generated from the ‘Generate Macro’ button in the Display Window is now saved to the expected directory
Symbol Plotting: the parameter symbol_format is now enabled when table mode is on
Wind Plotting: the wind calm threshold parameters are now enabled when the wind calm indicator is off
GRIB: fixed the behaviour of the environment variable METVIEW_EXTRA_GRIB_DEFINITION_PATH so that it adds the correct system path to the user’s path for GRIB tables
User Interface: double-clicking on a PostScript icon now visualises the file rather than opening it in a text editor
Build: the configure script now checks whether emoslib has been built with GRIB_API support or not
Build: missing .qrc files now in the tarball
Build: compilation errors relating to QXmlQuery on Ubuntu fixed
Change of default Metview versions
Done on 2013-12-03 (Linux desktops, lxab cluster only)
Command metview now launches metview4
Commands metview_new and metview_test now launch metview4_new
Command metview_old now launches metview4_old
Commands metview3, metview3_test and metview3_old are still available for running Metview 3
See Metview at ECMWF for more details
User Version 4.4.3
Upgrade 2013-11-05 (Linux desktops, lxab cluster, ecgate)
Version 4.4.3 became User Version (command metview4) atECMWF
Test Version 4.4.3
Introduced 2013-10-16 (Linux desktops, lxab cluster, ecgate)
installed as metview4_new
Macro: in the case where an icon-function is given an input definition which contains either an invalid parameter or an invalid value for a parameter, Metview’s behaviour was always to reset the definition to its defaults. As this causes unexpected results, the new behaviour is to stop with an error message in this situation.
Graph Plotting: changed the default value of Legend from On to Off. This once again allows a legend to be plotted when a Graph Plotting visual definition is used
Test Version 4.4.2
Introduced 2013-10-15 (Linux desktops, lxab cluster, ecgate)
At ECMWF:
Installed as metview4_new
Built with Magics 2.20.2.
Built with latest Mars client code
Built with GRIB_API 1.11.0
Built with ODB_API version 0.9.31
Built with netCDF 4.1.2 libraries for HDF support
Cross Section, Average, Vertical Profile, Hovmoeller: redesigned these icons so as to have a clearer separation between the responsibilities of the Data icons and the View icons. Possible action required: please see New Cross Section, Average, Vertical Profile and Hovmoeller modules in Metview 4.4
Cross Section, Average views: fixed issues where running in batch mode did not work properly when try to generate multiple plots either within one PostScript file, or between multiple PostScript files.
Hovmoeller View: re-introduced Hovmoeller View icon. Added new parameter: Vertical Scaling (Linear or Log).
Annotations: new Annotation View icon available. This accepts a Text Plotting icon; in this case it mimics Metview 3’s Text View icon. If no Text Plotting icon is passed to it, then it mimics Metview 3’s Empty View icon. See Migrating from Metview 3 to Metview 4
Relative Humidity: re-introduced the Relative Humidity icon. When used in Macro, it has been simplified so that it only returns a fieldset, rather than the previous behaviour which was to return a list which included visual definitions. This may require user-changes to Macro code which does something with the result of this module call.
Macro: user-defined Macro functions now take precedence over built-in Macro functions of the same name if they are defined directly in the user’s macro (not simply in their search path). The previous behaviour was that Metview’s own Macro functions would always take precedence.
Macro: fixed issue where plotting the result of another module call could fail.
Macro: fixed issue where passing a merged fieldset to another module resulted in a temporary file not being deleted.
Macro: fixed issue where the function** global_attributes(netcdf) **was crashing if one of the global attributes was more than 1024 characters.
Macro: fixed issue where a command-line call to Metview in batch mode (option -b) failed if the path to the macro script contained whitespace.
Macro Editor: indenting a block of text no longer indents empty lines.
Visual definition icons: updated all visdef icons to reflect the latest Magics parameters. This is now done automatically from the Magics resource files.
Geopoints to Grib: fixed issue where a temporary file generated by the Geopoints To Grib module was not being deleted.
Geopoints to Grib: fixed issue where supplying a small Threshold value (< 0.5 degrees) meant that some surrounding points outwith the threshold area, but within 0.5 degrees, were included in the calculations.
Data Examiners: fixed an issue where invoking one of Metview’s data examiners from the command line (-e option) with a path that contains spaces in it did not work.
ODB: Metview’s ODB tools can now handle ‘double’ type ODB columns.
Plotting: harmonised the subpage coordinates for the non-geographic views (Cartesian, Cross Section, Average, Vertical Profile). This means that some plots may be slightly shifted on the page.
RTTOV: added new functionality for running the RTTOV model from within Metview and visualising the results. We plan to release some documentation on this.
Geo View: added new Magics projections - Robinson and Lambert North Atlantic.
NetCDF: enabled ‘-e netcdf’ option on startup in order to start the netCDF examiner on startup, e.g. metview -e netcdf /path/to/netcdf/file
Text Plotting: it is now possible to provide finer-grained control over which fields are used in generating a user-defined title which accesses GRIB_API keys. see the Magics Text Plotting page for more details.
Layout: fixed issue where setting the page orientation to Portrait did not work; the workaround was to set up user-defined page dimensions - this may no longer work.
MARS: when installing Metview on a non-ECMWF machine which has access to a local MARS server, (configure option –enable-mars-access), it is now possible to tell Metview where the MARS configuration files are by setting the new configure option: –with-local-mars-home=/path/to/mars/home