2008-May-07 Modeling Committee Notes

Attendees:

Summary:

The meeting took place 1:30-3:00 EDT using WebEx web conferencing. 

We started off with introductions, welcoming Jamie Pringle from UNH (interested observer) and Sachin Bhate from MSSTATE (working with Rich Signell on the CF modeling toolkit for Matlab).

Jim Manning mentioned several upcoming workshops, including a informal gathering of New England Modelers on May 29 at the NMFS in Woods Hole, and the Larval TRANSport Lagrangian model (LTRANS) Workshop that will take place July 17-18 at Horn Point in Maryland (see http://northweb.hpl.umces.edu/LTRANS.htm for more details).    This latter meeting prompted a discussion about issues with particle tracking.   Jamie Pringle mentioned that the particle tracking schemes should interpolate the velocity field in space using methods that are consistent with the model numerics, and Mingshun Jiang and Jim Manning mentioned that particle tracking using model output (offline tracking) often is different from particle tracking using every time step (online tracking).   All agreed that having a well-documented tracking scheme that would work with a variety of models would be a very valuable tool for users of model data in the Gulf of Maine.

Jen Levin reminded folks that a GOMODP Web Services workshop will take place May 21 at GOMOOS in Portland (see http://www.gomodp.org/workshops/web-services-workshop for details, meeting summary, presentations)

Nick Wolff discussed the preferred procedure for creating metadata for models and model products.  This is to use the DocBuilder web form at the GCMD, entering from the GOMODP portal (http://gcmd.nasa.gov/portals/gomodp/).  Nick will work to make the instructions on the GOMODP Modeling web more clear on this point.

A demonstration was given of some of the new data sets added to the Model Interoperability Pilot Project, namely the global and regional bathymetry datasets (http://coast-enviro.er.usgs.gov/thredds/bathy_catalog.html).   The Matlab CF toolkit tool "cf_subsetGrid" can be used to extract topography data from these grids based on a lon/lat bounding box.

We closed with Mike Mickelson mentioning that the MWRA finds modeling products very useful for adapting sampling for the ongoing 2008 Red Tide event (will the forecast NE winds blow cells into Mass Bay?)

Action items:

• Nick Wolff will work with Steve Cousins to create a template for the GOMODP DocBuilder tool at GCMD.
• Nick Wolff will revise the instructions on the GOMODP wiki to make it clear how to get to the DocBuilder tool from the GOMODP portal.
  
• Bash Toulany will inquire about putting the latest NetCDF WaveWatch 3 model results on a web site served from BIO.  (http access is necessary to allow the "get byte range" feature of NetCDF-Java to work -- ftp is not sufficient).
• David Stuebe will post some realistic FVCOM netcdf files at UMASS Dartmouth, and seek to get the NetCDF files for the daily New England Forecast System (NEFS) online.
  
• Rich Signell will work on scheduling the next meeting for mid-June.