Aqua Satellite Project, Update 4 Released

Update 4 for the Aqua Satellite Project is ready. You can download it here. I'd have to say the big item in this release is the QA. But another big item is the new MapToGrid program.

MapToGrid

The MapToGrid program is for converting information in a black and white bitmap image to a 2.5 by 2.5 degree equal area grid that represents the Earth. An example image is shown to the left. It has water drawn in black and land draw in white. MapToGrid can take such information and transform it into C code, Javascript code, XML, or text. Other programs can then use this gridded information as a lookup table.

A screen shoot of a Javascript program that reads grid information and draws the Earth's water and land on an HTML page is shown below.

Javascript HTML image created using Draw2D and MapToGrid

MapToGrid is the first of several programs that, together, will allow the creation and display of gridded satellite data.

The command line help text for the MapToGrid program describes the details of using the program and is provided below.

MapToGrid converts a map image containing only the colors black and white into grid information. The map image must be a 32-bits-per-pixel, 720 by 360 pixel bitmap (.BMP) image. This image will be treated as a map of the entire world. The grid information will be a 2.5 by 2.5 degree equal area grid which indicates the percentage of white pixels in each grid.  The output grid can be formatted as C code, JavaScript code, XML, or text. The default is text. Usage:
MapToGrid [-h] -i Map_Bitmap -o Output_FileName [-f C | JavaScript | XML | text]
h Displays this help text.
i The location the bitmap (.BMP) input image.
o The name of the output file that will store the grid information.
f The output format. Valid format arguments are C, JavaScript, XML, or text.

There are sample bitmaps suitable for using with MapToGrid in the MapToGrid folder.

QA
A QA scrub was given to nearly all the existing programs (AMSUNormalize still needs to be done). Several major bugs were fixed and some new features added.

One of the new features is the the saving off of scans that don't pass NASA QA during an AMSUExtract run. You can take these rejected scans and run them through AMSUSummary just like the regular scans. A screen shot of a graph of rejected scans that has been summarized by AMSUSummary is shown below.

Another new feature is the -FLOOR switch added to AMSUExtract. This option lets you specify a lower value for scans. Any value below the floor is rejected. When using the -FLOOR switch you don't need to specify a value. In this case the value defaults to 150 K (-123.15° C, -189.67° F). The -FLOOR switch replaces the -q switch, which has been removed.

Yet another new feature added due to the QA was AMSUSummary printing out lower third and upper third averages for data rather than minimum and maximum values. This removes a lot of the noise that was created by the minimum and maximum feature. The maximum and minimum features have been removed.

A previous post showed a graph of the lower and upper averages that looked rather blocky. This has been fixed and you can use these features with full confidence.

Corrected Lower Third Averages Example

Change Log
So those are the big items. Here's the text of the change log for full details:


The following improvements were made for Update 4:

*) Added MapToGrid program that converts a map image containing only the colors black and
white into grid information.

The map image must be a 32-bits-per-pixel, 720 by 360 pixel bitmap (.BMP) image. This image
will be treated as a map of the entire world.

The grid information will be a 2.5 by 2.5 degree equal area grid which indicates the
percentage of white pixels in each grid.

The output grid can be formatted as C code, JavaScript code, XML, or text. The default is
text.

Includes command line help text.

*) Updated AMSUExtract program to send data that does not pass NASA's QA to stderr. Updated
amsu_extract script to handle this option. It sends stderr files to a file with the same
name as the regular file, but with the text "_Rejected" just before the file type suffix.

*) Added -FLOOR switch to AMSUExtract. The switch takes an optional value for degrees Kelvin.
Any scan below this value is sent to stderr rather than stdout. The value for -FLOOR defaults
to 150 K (-123.15° C, -189.67° F)

*) Removed -q switch from AMSUExtract. Limb adjustment checks are no longer done by this program.
NASA QA checks are done automatically now, as described above.

*) Default tolerance for Limb Check in AMSUQA raised from 0.5 to 1.0. Channels 12 and 19 added
to the list of channels that no limb check is performed on. Miscellaneous bugs in limb check
values fixed.

*) Modified AMSUExtract to report daily and monthly lower and upper 1/3 averages rather than
minimum and maximum values.

*) QAed AMSUExtract and AMSUSummary, fixing several major bugs.

*) MonthlyData and MonthlyDataMap have been refactored to a more generic ColumnData and
RowDataMap. These new classes are templates. The number of columns, ID type, and data type
are parameterized.

*) Added the ability to retrieve upper and lower averages to ColumnData and RowDataMap
classes.

*) Added avg and sum scripts. These scripts take a file name and a column number and return
the average or sum of that column. These are Unix scrips, requiring Unix utilities like cut,
grep, and awk. These scripts are not and will never be part of the main workflow, they are
intended as debugging aids. These new scripts are located in the Scripts folder. See the
comments inside the scripts for details on using them.