GrADS: Essential Component of COLA’s Cyberinfrastructure Brian Doty Jennifer Adams
GrADS Capabilities GrADS has 2 data models 5-D gridded data In situ (station) data Missing data handled throughout GrADS can read many data formats Binary BUFR GRIB (versions 1 & 2) HDF (versions 4 & 5) NetCDF (versions 3 & 4) Expression syntax is flexible, compact, recursive Programmable interface for scripting
Years of GrADS First code written Name chosen; First release Scripting language added Rapid community adoption BAMS CD-ROM distribution 1995 AMS Special Award GDS; OPeNDAP integration Version 2 released Begin version 2 development 2000 Survived Y2K User forum started
Development Drivers Scientists’ known needs Improve productivity of COLA scientists Requests from the user forum Anticipate future needs Trends in modeling Data formats, web tools, software libraries, etc. Interoperability
GrADS Future Plans
To build GrADS, link to: libcurl libdap libdapclient libdf libgadap libgd libgeotiff libgrib2c libhdf5 libhdf5_hl libjasper libjpeg libmfhdf libncurses libnetcdf libpng12 libreadline libshp libsz libtiff libudunits libxml2 libz
Focus Development in Three Areas Analysis Defop, Relational operators SVD/EOF, sorting, distributions ESMF grid interpolation Display Improve readability of quantitative information More image tools GIS Performance Multi-threading