GEONETCast toolbox Version 1.2

New features

MPEF

• NDVI from MSG, import of NDVI Min, Max and Mean from the whole field of view of the SEVIRI instrument
• New FIR-G product. This grid file is transformed to a point file (right click with mouse on the point file to open it as table).

DevCoCast

• INPE
• Latin America: import routine added for the Fire Ascii from GOES and NOAA.

PML

• Addition of various import routines for the marine products disseminated derived from MODIS and MERIS, for Africa (various) and Latin America (Brazil, MERIS only). The following products are now supported:
  • from MODIS: Chlorophyll-A, Turbidity Kd-490 and Water leaving radiances (nLw_547 and nLw_667);
  • from MERIS: Algal-1 and 2, and Water leaving radiances (nLw_490, nLw510, nLw 560 and nLw_619).
  • Regions covered for Africa are: Algeria-Tunisia, Egypt, Ghana, Libya, Madagascar (east and north-east), Morocco (north and south), Mozambique, Red Sea and Sierra Leone.
  • Region covered for Latin America is Brazil.

TAMSAT

• New set of import routines for products released after 11 March 2011. The file format has changed from TIF to NETCDF. Old routines are still available.

EAMNET

• Additon of various import routines for the marine products disseminated, derived from MODIS and MERIS, for Africa. The following products are now supported:
  • from MODIS: Chlorophyll-A, Turbidity Kd-490, Normalized Fluorescene Line Heigth and Sea Surface Temperature;
  • from MERIS: Algal-1 and 2, Total Suspended Matter and Yellow Substance.
  • Regions covered for Africa are: Angola, Cote d Ivoire, Guinea, Mauritania, Mozambique Channel, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia (north and south), Southern Africa (eastern, southern and western part), Tanzania.

AVISO

• Aviso altimetry products (pre-processed with BRAT) can be imported using different resolutions.

EAMNET

• Complete set of import routines for the various marine products produced through EAMNET, derived from MODIS and MERIS for Africa.

AMESD SADC

• New set of import routines for products related to agricluture, drought, fire and weather forecasting that are disseminated through GEONETCast by AMESD-SADC. Not all import routines are currently operational.
• Import routines have been checked for the following items
  • Drought: Vegetation performance maps:
    • VCI
    • SDVI
    • PASG
  • Agriculture: Agricultural products from Remote Sensing:
    • Current rainfall estimates map
    • Rainfall estimates compared with average (%)
    • Cum rainfall map
    • Cum rainfall map compared with average
    • NDVI compared with average (difference)
    • NDVI compared with average (%)
    • WRSI
    • SMI
    • Cum DMP
    • Cum DMP compared with average
  • CSIR Fire and SAWS Seasonal Forecast
    • All product import routines have been checked with sample data provided by CSIR and SAWS
• Additional remarks: Use is made of sample data in a format that will be disseminated by GEONETCast in the near future.

Additional changes

• SAF products
  • 7Z is now used for decompression of original files (orignially bzip2-104-x86-win32.exe).

• Vector data in sub-directory util\maps\
  • Coordinate system has been changed to latlon (initially set to latlonwgs84.scy).

• Batch routines
  • checked for consistency. Some batch routines have been renamed, e.g. those used to import the MPEF and LRIT products and images respectively.

• Service objects
  • included in the subdirectory\Util and sub-directory \System for the various new import routines. When installing the toolbox all files for this toolbox subdirectory are copied to the ILWIS\System sub-directory and are available to the user. Files in this category are georeferences, coordinate systems, lookup tables, etc.

• Removed files
  • Old files with DLL extension (cygpng12.dll and cygz.dll) from the sub-directory \util\. These files were used for extracting GRIB formatted data. There is a new version of WGRIB.
  • bzip2-104-x86- win32.exe

GEONETCast toolbox Version 1.1

Data Manager

• Empty folders that are a destination folder for one of the items are no longer (accidentally) deleted. This solves the accidental deletion of the famous Other/RSS/MPEF when it was empty.
• Wildcard characters * and ? are now allowed in the filename pattern (thus not full regular expressions). As a result, you need to go through your configuration file once to append a * to all patterns, otherwise they don't match the Geonetcast files.

MPEF

• Included the CLA (transformed from BUFR into phase, low-medium and high cloud percentages per segment / pixel)

VGT4Africa

• Included new product BA (Burnt Area). Map value is yyjulianday (e.g. map value of 30219 is year 30 and julian day 219)
• Change of batch routines for import of DMP, NDVI, NDWI, SWB and VPI. These files are now decompressed using 7z.

Real time visualization

• Included GOES-MSG TIR composite (from INPE), loop of 5 hours.

Web Mapping Service

• Included position of the ITCZ, for the Northern Hemisphere.
• Included NOAA weather charts for Northern Hemisphere, Europe and Africa, Africa and Asia and Latin America and Africa. Contains forecast for up to 36 hours with wind speed, wind direction and temperature.
• Flight level selected is FL050, meaning situation at 5000 feet, or at a standard barometric pressure of 850 millibar (assuming height approximation of roughly 33 feet per millibar):
  
  1013.25 – 850 = 163.25 mb
  163.25 * 33 = 5387.25 feet
  5387.25 * 0.304 = 1637 metres
  
  This assumes standard barometric pressure (1013.25 mb at sea level – using standard datum), but does not include local topography. This flight level is the lowest level and in many cases will correspond to ground surface phenomena for wind speed, direction and temperature.

Real time animations (for MSG and GOES-TIR composite):

• The routine to create a scheduled task has been changed. It did not work under WINDOWS-7 (the batch start directory had to be defined for the scheduled task to be properly initiated).