2. Release Notes

2.1. Version 3.1.0 (2024-08-13)

• Support for additional VIIRS EDRs, including

  • Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD)

  • Cloud Top Height and Cloud Top Temperature

  • Surface Reflectances, including True Color

  • Vegetation Indices (NDVI, EVI)

• Support added for FY-3E MERSI-LL instrument

• Re-organization of software directories

• Optimizations

• Bug fixes

2.2. Version 3.0.0 (2023-02-21)

• New Implementation “polar2grid.sh -r <reader> -w <writer>”

• Reader name changes and replacements

• Writer name changes

• NOAA20 output file names standardized to “noaa20” prefix

• Alpha Band now included as default. Use --fill-value 0 to not include

• Specify number of CPU’s to use --num-workers <num>

• --list-products and --list-product-all now available.

• Scaling “.ini” files no longer supported. Replaced with “.yaml”

• Longer list of updates included in the documentation

2.3. Version 2.3.0 (2020-01-13)

• Add FY-3C VIRR reader

• Add MERSI-2 reader

• Add VIIRS EDR Flood reader

• Add VIIRS EDR Active Fire reader

• Add “overlay.sh” script for overlaying active fire products

• Add ‘–borders-width’ flag to “add_coastlines.sh”

• Fix AVHRR reader not masking bad 0 values

• Fix MIRS reader not using valid range properly

2.4. Version 2.2.1 (2018-04-27)

• Fix CREFL reader not reading negative reflectances

• Fix ratio sharpening calculating bad ratios for dark or invalid regions

• Fix VIIRS and MODIS false color by using the green band for sharpening

• Fix AMSR2 L1B scaling for PNG creation (amsr2_png.ini)

• Fix NinJo writer not using backend config command line option

2.5. Version 2.2 (2017-12-14)

• Phase out legacy <reader>2<writer>.sh scripts and replace with polar2grid.sh <reader> <writer> implementation. Although the legacy scripts are still supported in Version 2.2, they are no longer documented.

• Add new AWIPS NetCDF writer “scmi”.

• Add new grid definitions for 300m, 750m and 1km AWIPS SCMI tiled sectors LCC, Polar, Mercator, and Pacific.

• Add ACSPO SST reader.

• Add CLAVR-x Cloud Product reader.

• Fix scaling sometimes using the wrong configuration on certain platforms.

• Fix MODIS navigation calculations over the prime meridian.

• Add ‘hncc_dnb’ VIIRS product.

• Add JPSS-1/NOAA-20 support.

2.6. Version 2.1 (2016-11-25)

• Start using Pytroll SatPy library for various features

• Phasing out of legacy <reader><writer>.bash scripts and replacing with polar2grid.sh <reader> <writer> implementation.

• Add ability to output float geotiffs

• Add ability to store geotiff tiles instead of strips

• Fix fornav bug for non-float inputs (unused in most cases)

• Add add_colormap.sh script for adding color tables to geotiffs

• Add add_coastlines.sh script for adding borders, coastlines, rivers, etc to geotiffs

• Add basic NUCAPS reader (via SatPy)

• Add VIIRS L1B reader (via SatPy)

• Add AMSR2 L1B reader (via SatPy)

• Add MIRS reader

• Change default fornav-d flag in most glue scripts to 1

• Adjust true/false color scaling to be more continuous (similar result)

• Add AWIPS Puerto Rico Grid (210)

• Add polar_alaska dynamic grid

• New version of ShellB3 for C/python dependencies

• Fix geotiff geotransform to fix “off by half-pixel” bug.

2.7. Roadmap to Version 3.0

• Collaboration with the Pytroll project and the creation of the new SatPy library will result in large internal changes to Polar2Grid.

  • SatPy is a replacement for the internals of Polar2Grid and a replacement for the Pytroll mpop package.

  • Migrate Polar2Grid frontends to SatPy readers.

  • Use SatPy for resampling and output writers, not just some readers.

  • Rename frontends to readers, backends to writers, products to datasets.

  • The remaining roadmap bullets are subject to change based on the Pytroll/Polar2Grid merger.

• Create new grid file format for more flexibility

• Allow resampling parameters to be configured based on dataset identifiers (satellite, instrument, etc)

• Further fornav updates

  • Move all module logic to C++ and remove cython dependency for this module (simple one function cython wrapper should be easy to remove)

  • Try rewriting in either opencl or use openmp for multiprocess work, but we’re getting to the point that fornav is not the slowest part of fornav (intermediate disk use)

• Consider linking directly to PROJ.4 C library for ll2cr (removing pyproj dependency for ll2cr) to make it faster

• Update rescaling with cython wrapper (test performance before committing to this)

  • Needs change of clipping and masking logic so that its a decorator and can be easily excluded from cython code (which would use internal logic for those steps)

• Add proper handling for product data being kept in memory (should speed up quite a few things)

  • For better handling of in-memory data, should either let the user choose or determine it based on available memory

  • Frontend’s could choose logical default (VIIRS should probably write to disk, DR-RTV should stay in memory)

  • Glue script can use memory analysis to come up with default but can be forced by command line argument

• Python 3 Compatibility

2.8. Version 2.0.1 (2015-10-19)

• Fixed small bug in ll2cr where NaNs in navigation would cause a dynamic grid to never “fit”

2.9. Version 2.0.0 (2015-10-13)

• Rewrite of entire internal structure and behavior of polar2grid (Frontends, Backends, Remapping)

• Most frontends (VIIRS, MODIS, etc) are filename independent and try to determine type of file by internal structure

• Frontends now do operations based on what “products” are requested and return a “scene” object

• The polar2grid.core.meta module is added to provide structure to intermediate steps (Frontend -> Remap -> Backend) with the classes it offers

• Backends now operate on a gridded scene as a whole (with option for operating on one product at a time for some backends)

• A compositor role was added to provide a more flexible method of creating true/false color and other composited images

• ll2cr rewritten in python and cython (C-like python) to be faster and more accurate

• Grid determination has been essentially removed since “data fits in grid” decisions don’t make sense unless you are in projection/grid space (ll2cr serves this purpose now)

• fornav has been rewritten to be accessed directly from python. The ms2gt version of fornav is no longer used.

• The ms2gt version of fornav was also modified to be faster and is still destributed with the software bundle (for this release only).

• GPD grids and support for them has been removed. PROJ.4 is more flexible, more widely used, and can actually support the AWIPS grids better.

• Python setup.py files updated to better meet common practice of other python projects (READMEs, classifiers, etc)

• Major changes to rescaling so that it can be specified independent of output data type and “increment_by_one”

• Removed AWIPS I support due to National Weather Service using AWIPS II from now on

• Added basic ACSPO and MIRS frontends

• Added HDF5 backend

2.10. Version 1.2.0 (2014-08-16)

• Fixed VIIRS CREFL C code and added custom version to repository (viirs_crefl)

• Added ability to use ‘deg’ units on grid origin definitions

• Latlong grids use degrees instead of radians (affects grid configurations and intermediate values in code)

• Added wgs84_fit_250 grid

• AWIPS grids “fixed” to actually align properly in AWIPS. The grid specification says ellipsoid earth, but my results say spherical.

2.11. Version 1.1.7 (2013-07-07)

• Non-TC geolocation used as backup option for VIIRS Frontend

• Fixed major bug when creating true colors (Issue #81). If the high resolution data resolved to a different dynamic grid than the low resolution data then a true color could not be made.

2.12. Version 1.1.6 (2013-05-31)

• Fixed frontends handling of symbolic links for files

2.13. Version 1.1.5 (2013-05-28)

• Various CREFL fixes

• Added MODIS geotiffs

• Added MODIS 250m bands

2.14. Version 1.1.0 (2013-02-13)

• Added MODIS Frontend (limited number of bands)

• Added CREFL Frontend (including true color glue script)

• Changed default geotiff data type to unsigned 8-bit integer

• Added option to provide user created grid configuration files

• NinJo backend added for DWD added

2.15. Version 1.0.0 (2013-01-25)

• Object oriented Frontend, Backend, and Rescaling

• Python version of ll2cr (still uses ms2gt fornav)

• Geotiff Backend

• Start of developer’s guide in documentation