GSD web sounding change details

7-Oct-2009 (production and beta)
Changed the high-altitude option from 10 mb to 0.5 mb, to accommodate the FIM. Routine(s) changed: sdg.SoundingCanvas, sdg.Sounding, sdg.SoundingPanel.

20-Aug-2009 (production and beta)
Changed how airport/sounding sites are determined (and tweaked) when pre-made soundings are accessed. I hope this is transparent to users, but the sounding's may have a different site name when they are displayed than the name the user originally requested. (This caused by the difference between RAOB site names and airport names when the two sites are nearby.) Routine(s) changed: get_soundings.cgi, get_pre_made_soundings.pl.

6-Aug-2009 (production and beta)
Set Helicity to 'missing' for Op40 soundings, because the Helicity in the model fields is apparently always zero. Routine(s) changed: java_soundings.c.

3-Aug-2009 (production and beta)
Boilerplate links to government organizations and disclaimers added.

28-July-2009 (production)

27-July-2009 (beta)
Added a 'simple' version of the SkewT (and Tephigram) plots. The background on these plots have ONLY altitude and temperature lines, so lack the isobars, hodograph, adiabats, and mixing ratio lines. The simple and full background can be toggled via a button under the plot, and the simple background can be requested as the initial condition from the from the URL by adding "simple=true&" to the query string, or from the initial page. Routine(s) changed: Welcome.cgi, reply-setup.cgi, plot_soundings.cgi, MainSoundings, sdg.SoundingPanel, sdg.SkewTPlot, sdg.SoundingCanvas.

26-May-2009 (production and beta)

19-May-2009 (production and beta)

13-May-2009 (production and beta)
Small change to cause 5-letter model names (such as 'Bak40') to have date/time columns for text soundings in the same place as they are for 4-letter model names. This was done to allow the non-java (idl) SkewT plotting code to correctly read the GSD sounding format even for 5-letter model names. Routine(s) changed: java_sounding.c

11-May-2009 (production and beta)

21-Feb-2009
Fixed a bug that caused an error message to appear when files aren't available in the soundings.tar files. Routine(s) changed: get_pre_made_sounding.pl

16-Feb-2009
Fixed a bug with the time mark for RR files. Routine(s) changed: wrgsi_sounding.c

28-Jan-2009 (production and beta)
Top-level page updated to list what archival soundings are available. Also, the longest forecast projection and run frequency available on the ESRL/GSD sounding site is indicated for most models. Search for pre-made soundings limited to 12h forecast projections for all models except GFS and FIM, for which the search goes out to projections of 240h (but only 120h forecasts are currently available). Routine(s) changed: Welcome.cgi, get_pre_made_soundings.pl.

21-Jan-2009 (production and beta)

19-Dec-2008 (beta)

16-Dec-2008 (beta and production)
Switchable ability to show hydrometeors has been added. The mixing ratios of cloud water, rain water, snow, ice, and grouple (in ln kg/kg) are indicated to the right of the SkewT plot. This only works for the beta page (for internal use by GSD), and for current (not pre-made) soundings for Dev1320, Op20, Bak20, dev, and dev2 models. Routine(s) changed: Welcome.cgi, plot_soundings.cgi, get_soundings.cgi, agrib_sounding.c, agrib2_sounding.c, sdg.SoundingLoader.

26-Nov-2008 (production and beta)
Pre-made soundings are now mostly stored in and retrieved from tar files, to minimize the number of files on disk. Routine(s) changed: get_pre_made_sounding.pl.

21-Nov-2008 (production)
Op20 soundings are no longer available, because producing them from grib2 files produces an unsustainable load on our web server.

24-Oct-2008 (production and beta)

17-Oct-2008 (beta)
Changed the calculation of heights at mandatory levels. Previously, we used the standard atmosphere height at each mandatory level. These made the heights inconsistent with adjacent heights whenever the atmosphere is not standard. (This wasn't a problem for aircraft soundings, for which a standard atmosphere is always used to calculate heights, but was a problem for model soundings.) We now calculate heights at mandatory levels as we do for other variables: interpolation in log p from adjacent (non-mandatory) levels. Routine(s) changed: sdg.Sounding.

12-Feb-2008 (production)

7-Feb-2008 (beta)
For world model soundings (GFS), the lat and lon sometimes run together in the text soundings: e.g. "40.00-105.5", so the lat lon parser has trouble. This didn't cause any problems because the lat/lon read from the sounding text is not used. Nonetheless, we fixed the parser to deal with this issue. Routine(s) changed: sdg.SoundingLoader.

4-Feb-2008 (beta)
Reading grib2 files for Op20. Unfortunately, 4-5 times slower than reading the grib files, which will go away at any time. Also, the lat/lon of the grid column is slightly different with grib2. Routine(s) changed: get_soundings.cgi, get_model_directory.pl

3-Dec-2007 (beta and production)
Changes to properly get the 'latest' analysis for soundings, such as from the Rapid Refresh, that are available both as pre-generated soundings at RAOB sites and as soundings generated on the fly from grib (or netCDF) files. The previous algorithm could find the wrong time for the latest analysis. Routine(s) changed: get_soundings.cgi, get_pre_made_sounding.pl, get_model_file.pl, get_latest_analysis_time.pl, get_model_directory.pl

9-Oct-2007 (beta and production)
Change to replace '9999' with the corect WMO ID for some RAOBs. Routine(s) changed: raobs/get_raobs.cgi.

22-August-2007 (beta and production)
Change to restrict TAMDAR soundings to Government only. (Non-Mesaba TAMDAR soundings are restricted to GSD only, per agreement with AirDat.) Routine(s) changed: acars/get_acars.cgi, acars/get_user_level.pl

21-August-2007 (production)

20-August 2007 (beta)

16-August 2007 (beta)

14-August 2007 (beta and production)
Retrospective data (loaded by special pleading, and when staff time is available) is listed as a separate data source. And, we can now read 13km grib(1) files as well as 20km files for retro data only. Routine(s) changed: Welcome.cgi, plot_soundings.cgi, get_soundings.cgi, get_model_directory.pl, get_model_file.pl agrib_sounding.c

13-August (beta and production)
Fixed a problem with SHARP soundings brought about by Friday's change to airport identification for non-java soundings. Routine(s) changed: reply-skewt.cgi

10-August (beta and production)

7-August-2007 (production)
All beta changes moved to production.

5/6-July-2007 (beta)

4-Jun-2007 (beta)
Changed date scheme for soundings from DD/MM/YY to DDMonthYY, where Month is 'Jan', 'Feb', etc. This done to avoid ambiguity between MM/DD/YY (US) and DD/MM/YY (international) (even though the month names are in English). Routine changed: sdg.Sounding.

8-May-2007 (beta and production)
Changed the calculation of iCAPE and iCIn (CAPE and CIn for interactive parcel trajectories) to include the entire sounding. Previously, these calculations were only performed on the part of the sounding visible on the SkewT plot. When the plot was zoomed this resulted in misleading values for iCAPE and iCIn. Routine changed: sdg.SkewTPlot.

9-Nov-2006 (beta and production)

30-Aug-2006 (beta)

19-Aug-2006 (production and beta)

25-Apr-2006 (production)
All beta changes moved to production.

25-Apr-2006 (beta)
Changed disk location from which we get dev2 20km grib files (from /exchange to /public). Should be NO CHANGES to output (except that more forecasts are available, but they are not kept around as long).

23-Mar-2006 (beta)
Added the relative humidity after the dewpoint at the cursor level. Routines changed: sdg.SkewTPlot.

23-Feb-2006 (production and beta)
For Bak20, dev, and dev2 analyses, and 1, 3, 6, 9h forecasts at 0 and 12 UTC, archival soundings (since 23 Feb 2006) are available for these RAOB sites.

16-Feb-2006 (production and beta)
Corrected the link to Profiler site information. Also, when no profiler site is specified, the site defaults to PLTC2. Routines changed: get_profs.cgi.

15-Feb-2006 (production and beta)
Fixed a pretty obscure error: when multiple soundings from a RAOB site that has a WMOID but no 'name' are displayed, soundings after the first were given '9999' as the name. This has now been fixed so that all soundings will be given the WMOID as their name on the sounding plot. Routines changed: get_raobs.cgi.

7-Feb-2006 (production)

6-Feb-2006 (beta)
Changed the colors of the third and fourth soundings overlaid to display better. The third overlay is now shown in brownish, and the fourth is shown in dark green. Routine changed: sdg.SkewTPlot.

10-Jan-2006 (beta)
Change made to allow up to 13 different sounding sources to appear in the 'load soundings' frame (previous limit was 10, so the source 'Aircraft (Restricted)' didn't show up. Routine changed: sdg.LoadSoundingsFrame.

5-Dec-2005 (production)
All beta changes moved to production

1-Dec-2005 (beta)
Pretty major rewrite of internal data access (no change to the data display). This was done to make the model names more accurately depict the models that provide the sounding data. Changes are the following In general, soundings from 20km grids take longer to load than those from 40km grids.

In addition, for dev and dev2, analysis soundings at airports with METAR sites will be stored for 30 days. Previously these, like all other model soundings, were unavailable after about 24h. Also, at these sites, 1, 3, 6 and 9 hr forecast soundings valid at 0 UTC are saved for 30 days.

1-Aug-2005 (oper)
All beta changes moved to operations

30-Jun-2005 (beta and oper)

29-Jun-2005 (beta)
Changed the calculation of iCAPE (CAPE for an interactive parcel) to only include the area at and above the Level of Free Convection (LFC). (This area is indicated by red hash marks.) Also, the LFC for the parcel (iLFC), if it exists, is shown at the right of the plot. Routine changed: sdg.SkewTPlot.

31-Mar-2005 (beta and operational)
Behavior changed from the 25-Mar-2005 version so that if both the arguments 'start' and 'startSecs' are defined (shouldn't happen, but it has for at least one user), 'start' will take precidence, as it did in the past. Routines changed get_soundings.cgi.

25-Mar-2005 (beta and operational)
If no arguments are given to plot_soundings.cgi, it will now default to the latest RUC sounding for DEN. Previously, the applet failed to load. Routines changed get_soundings.cgi.

7-Mar-2005 (beta and operational)

4-Mar-2005 (beta)
Slight change made in the buttons under the sounding display to ensure that long sounding names don't slide off the left edge of the button. (If they're too long, the names will be clipped on the right side, which is the year.)Routine changed lib.MyButton.

2-Mar-2005 (operational and beta)
[Internal changes; these should be transparent to users.] Code changed to read grid parameters directly from grib files, in preparation for reading 20km and 13km files (we currently read only 40km grids, whether in grib or netcdf format). Also the code guesses whether a file is in grib or netcdf by looking for 'netcdf' in the path to the file. Should be easier to maintain. Routines changed: grib_sounding.c, get_sounding.cgi

23-Feb-2005 (operational)
All beta changes moved to operations.

22-Feb-2005 (beta)
"CIMSS" soundings added. These are soundings taken by the Wayne Feltz of the U. Wisconsin Aerobago team (see http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tamdar/). These soundings are being taken in Memphis from 22 Feb to 10 March 2005, in support of the TAMDAR Great Lakes Fleet Experiment. Routines changed/added: reply_setup.cgi, get_cimss.cgi.

18-Feb-2005 (beta)
Location of sounding ID below the SkewTPlot moved slightly to the left so as not to obscure dewpoints so much when multiple plots are overlaid. Routines changed: sdg.SkewTPlot.

2-Feb-2005 (beta)
RUC models dev and dev2 added. These are identical except that dev2 contains TAMDAR data. In both cases, soundings appear more slowly than for MAPS and RUC soundings, because of the formats in which the model results are stored. Routines changed: reply-setup.cgi, plot_soundings.cgi, Welcome.cgi.

21-Sep-2004 (operational)
All beta changes moved to operations

21-Sep-2004 (beta)

??-Sep-2004 (beta)
Flipped date and time (time now comes first) on the sounding buttons below the map, so the time shows even when the date is pushed off the button to the right due to long station names (such as when a lat,lon is used instead of a name).

18-Aug-2004 (operational)
All beta changes moved to the operational site.

17-Aug-2004 (beta and operational)
Corrected a little bug that matched RAOB station OUN with the word "County", causing soundings from OUN to be unavailable. Routine changed: get_rabos.cgi

4-Aug-2004 (beta)
Changed the model sounding access function so that the variable startSecs does not have to start on an hour boundary. If the interval [startSecs,endSecs] contains certain hours, soundings for those hours will be displayed. Routine changed: get_soundings.cgi

16-July-2004 (beta)

11-May-2004

3-May-2004
All beta and alpha changes moved to production, with one exception: data in grib format are not used. Unpacking grib files for MAPS and RUC model runs is too time-consuming even on the new server given the amount of use this site gets.

14-April-2004 (alpha)

2-Jan-2004 (alpha)

5 May 2003 (beta and oper)

21 March 2002 (beta and oper)
Corrected an error that caused wind directions on soundings from the RUC and MAPS models to be incorrect. MAPS and RUC winds at longitudes other than 95 West should have been rotated clockwise with respect to true N by - sin(25°)*(-95 - longitude), where longitude is in degrees, with E being positive, and the rotation is in degrees. This error caused wind directions near the E and W edges of the MAPS/RUC domain to be incorrect by as much as 18°.

5 March 2002 (beta and oper)
Profiler soundings are available again.

31 Jan 2002 (beta and oper)

15 Nov 2000 (oper)
Replaced the adiabats file (the background for the plots) that had an error in the 10 degree wet adiabat.

30 May 2000 (beta & oper)
Updated the Standard Atmosphere routines to correctly reflect the US 1976 Standard atmosphere above 226 mb. (Previous versions were a little off above this altitude, but this affected only the display, not the data themselves.) Classes changed: Sounding.java, SkewTPlot.java, SoundingDriver.java, SoundingCanvas.java

17 Feb 2000 (beta & oper)
The altitude of the cursor location is now indicated near the cursor, along with pressure and temperature (SkewTPlot.java, Sounding.java).

31 Jan 2000 (beta & oper)
Changed metar.short to reflect the FSL "official" METAR data, and also to include stations that were previously in metar.short.

28 Jan 2000 (beta)

12 Jan 2000 (operational)


Prepared by Bill Moninger, Bill.Moninger@noaa.gov
Last modified: Wed Oct 7 23:31:34 GMT 2009