What's new in the UNL LAC Climate Change Portal

• 13 December 2017
• ChangeFactor: added new application to scale climate change results to intermediate times using a change factor methodology.


• 15 November 2017
• Verify, TimeSeries, Indices: added country-contributed data for 13 stations in Honduras


• 13 November 2017
• Verify: added option to smooth data before computing statistics and plotting
• MapMaker, Download: recomputed Change and Offset datasets for "static" land-surface parameters to reflect the actual value, rather than the difference between runs


• 11 November 2017
• Verify, TimeSeries, Indices: added country-contributed data for 219 stations in Colombia


• 8 November 2017
• Verify, TimeSeries, Indices: added country-contributed data for 18 stations in Ecuador


• 7 November 2017
• Verify, TimeSeries, Indices: added country-contributed data for 16 stations in Guatemala


• 2 October 2017
• MapMaker: added capability to reduce the crowding when wind vectors are plotted. A thinning parameter between 0 and 1 may be specified to reduce the number of vectors plotted, with 0.0 representing no thinning (the default) and 1.0 representing maximal thinning.


• 12 September 2017
• MapMaker: added capability to choose any of the 650 named colors available for contour lines and wind vectors.


• 4 August 2017
• Indices: New application package under development. Statistical distribution of standard climate indices computed from station observations can be compared to indice values from each year of selected downscaling runs. Some indices not yet implemented are disabled at present.
  Important: not all indices can be computed from all observational databases.


• 6 July 2017
• Verify, TimeSeries, Download: added "background job" button (near "Output" options). For large data requests that time out, choose this option to have job run in the background and email notification when completed.
  Important: some preliminary testing has determined that background jobs are processed correctly in all major modern browsers except Safari and Internet Explorer. Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera correctly put the job in the background, although Firefox never "finishes" loading the notice page, even though it has completed.


• 3 July 2017
• MapMaker: added "Map" button in "Plot Modifications" to allow graphical selection of a subregion from the desired domain. Clicking this button will pop up a map window with project domains drawn. Click on the small black square (■) on the map controls to select a region using a rubberband rectangle.
  Important: the "project" and "domain" must be selected in the top drop-down menus before using this option and the region selected must be entirely within the chosen domain.


• 28 June 2017
• MapMaker: added "Get Data" button to map page
• downloads netCDF file with data used to make plot
• if domain was subset, downloaded data are subset
• Verify: added "Get Data" button to plot page
• downloads CSV file with data used to make plot
• TimeSeries: added "Get Data" button to plot page
• downloads CSV file with data used to make plot
• if data were smoothed, downloaded data are smoothed


• 21 June 2017
• TimeSeries: plot climatological time series of selected parameters from observations, historical model runs, and climate change scenario projections. Observing station, geographic point or region can be selected for averaging.


• 19 June 2017
• MapMaker: dropdown menu for selecting color map now has images of each color map. These represent a selected subset (i.e., "MeteoSwiss") of all NCL color maps; alternatively, you may enter the name of any valid NCL color map in the text box.
• portal: all portal pages now have a blue background and a modern, sans-serif font, because Clint got tired of looking at Time New Roman on a plain, white background (he's still working on some other styling issues)


• 14 June 2017
• Download: added flux parameters
• MapMaker: added flux parameters
• portal: posted table of WRF variables with descriptions


• 13 June 2017
• Download: new version installed
• region or location selectable on accompanying map
• click on the small black square (■) on the map controls to select a region using a rubberband rectangle
• click on the marker icon () on the map controls to select a single point
• the selected latitude(s) and longitude(s) will be displayed in the appropriate text boxes
• additional parameters added, including relative humidity, SST, and upper-air and soil data
• if upper-air parameters or soil parameters selected, data levels may be selected; if data levels are not selected, all data levels are included
• if a single point is selected, both netCDF and CSV files will be created; for areas, only a netCDF file is created at this time
• in CSV files:
• missing data are indicated by “M”. This should only occur for upper-level data on pressure levels below ground (e.g., at Mexico City, data on the 1000 hPa, 925 hPa and 850 hPa levels would be missing, as the surface pressure at that location is generally near 750 hPa)
• for upper-air and soil parameters, the level is appended to the parameter name (e.g., geopotential height at 925 hPa is labeled “Z@925” in the CSV file)
• previous version remains available for use


• 30 May 2017
• Verify, TimeSeries, Indices: added country-contributed data for 383 stations in Bolivia; tools in place to add data from other countries as they are made available


• 26 May 2017
• MapMaker: new version installed
• completely re-written in Python
• will allow additional variables to be computed, as needed
• previous version remains available for use


• 16 May 2017
• Verify: fixed timeout problem so large datasets can be used (e.g., Bolivia)


• 10 May 2017
• Verify: new unified verification application activated
• downscaled Historical runs for all projects
• observational data from 2 international databases (GSOD and GHCN-D)


• 3 May 2017
• MapMaker: added TSK (skin temperature), for SST
• MapMaker: added ability to mask water, land, or neither


• 7 April 2017
• MapMaker: error message for relative humidity on "Change" and "Offset" runs – no map produced
• MapMaker: allows for user selection of any NCL color table
• dropdown includes MeteoSwiss colortables plus "default"
• user can enter text name of any available NCL colormap


• 31 March 2017
• Download: return domain limits if user selects out-of-domain point(s) for data selection
• Download: daily/monthly dataset selection


• 30 March 2017
• MapMaker: added "Change" and "Offset" datasets for Bolivia
• MapMaker: added "True winter" option (i.e., DJF, instead of JFD) for seasonal averaging


• 24 March 2017
• Upload: [not yet operational] password-protected page for upload of country data and metadata