2009-Feb-24 Modeling Committee Meeting notes

Attendees:

Summary:

The meeting took place 1:30-2:35 EDT using WebEx web conferencing. 

Rich mentioned that although the group hasn't met for some time, it didn't mean there hadn't been much progress.  In fact the GOMODP Modeling Committee Pilot Project to achieve model data interoperability via CF conventions, NcML, the THREDDS Data Server and Opendap+CF compliant tools such as the CF Toolbox for Matlab are being implemented nationwide as part of the NOAA IOOS Program Office efforts.    Rich reviewed the centralized THREDDS catalog for modeling data, and discussed the migration strategy from model providers simplying placing NetCDF files on their web sites to installing THREDDS Data Servers and serving their own data.   A centralized catalog is still possible, and it's possible to maintain the old data URLS in hidden catalogs while encouraging folks to use new URLS that go directly to the provider by making these the visable catalogs. 

Rich gave a description of using ncWMS (browser-based mapping client) to access the data from model data in the interoperability project.   This is a nice quick browse facility, works with curvilinear as well as rectilinear data (but not unstructured grid data) and can output images and movies to Google Earth.

There is an upcoming GOMODP annual meeting on March 31 in Portland where Steve Cousins will report on our accomplishments to date, and where this subject could be discussed.