Thursday, February 11, 2010

Dr. John Christy On UAH Source Code

Following a suggestion by lucia over at The Blackboard, I wrote to Dr. Christy and Dr. Spencer of UAH asking about the public availability of the source code used to process UAH data. Dr. Christy replied:
We are in a program with NOAA to transfer the code to a certified system that will be mounted on a government site and where almost anyone should be able to run it.  We actually tried this several years ago, but our code was so complicated that the transfer was eventually given up after six months.
So UAH source code isn't currently available, but they're in the process of working with a NOAA program to make it available. I followed up asking if there was a general ETA for this availability.  He replied:
I talked with John Bates of NOAA two weeks ago and indicated I wanted to be early (I said the "first guinea pig") in the program.  He didn't have a firm date on when his IT/programming team would be ready to start the transition, so I don't know.
So that's where we stand. No source code now, but there is a process to make it available in the future.

I'd like to thank Dr. Christy for his help in this, and his quick replies (almost immediate!). He also provided me with the official boundaries used to create the various UAH regions in their temperature data, such as extra-tropic boundaries. I've updated the code that produces the ISCCP regional products to exactly match UAH boundaries. More information on that is here.

Previous Posts In This Series:
The Weather And International Traffic in Arms Regulations: Perfect Together

4 comments:

  1. If someone is working on it at NOAA, you might be able to find the project/program titles, and find out who the various people are. That might also help you establish the timeline for the deliverables on the program flow chart. Then, you'll have an ETA. It could slip-- but you'd know it.

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  2. Great idea lucia. I'll see if I can get ahold of John Bates. Thanks. :)

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