Change Details
- 14-Dec-2005 (beta and production)
- Several new airports in central Africa added. Routine changed: airport_info.txt
- 5-Dec-2005 (beta and production)
- Changed the names of the model soundings that can be loaded via
the 'Load Other Sdgs' button on the soundings plot to reflect the
models that are available on the soundings page. See the
sounding
page change details for more information.
- 27-Oct-2005 (beta and production)
- Changed the main page to always open links in new windows. Routines changed: Welcome.cgi
- Changed the archival restore function from MADIS to accomodate
their new directory structure. Routines changed: restore_madis_data.pl
- 5-Oct-2005 (production)
- All beta changes moved to production
- Quality-controlled EDR (turbulence) data from United
Airlines/NCAR are now displayed instead of non-QC'd data. All
UAL/NCAR EDR data below 20,000 ft are flagged as bad because
their quality cannot be assured.
- E-AMDAR data (available as a select option in the
select window) are now identified separately
from other AMDAR data.
- Due to a reorganization here in Boulder, the Forecast
Systems Laboratory no longer exists. We are now the
Global Systems Division of the Earth
System Research Laboratory: ESRL/GSD. Most of the
displays reflect this and others will be changed in the future
to reflect this new organizational title. Routines changed: MainACARS, sdg/SoundingCanvas.
- 16-Sept-2005 (beta)
- We now correctly set the min and max altitude of a flight when all
data have bad temperature or wind. (If both W & T of all obs are
bad, the min and max altitudes are set to bad values and the
flight won't be plotted. Routine changed: Flight.
- 13-Sept-2005 (oper and beta)
- Additional airports added in Africa and the Middle East.
- 2-Aug-2005 (oper and beta)
- Small change to move the placement of the applet to the top of the
applet window, for more efficient usage of screen space. Routine changed: MainACARS. Also,
added plea to forecasters to take the TAMDAR survey. Routine changed: Welcome.cgi.
- 1-Aug-2005 (oper)
- All beta changes moved to operation, with one
exception: E-AMDAR is not yet treated as a separate data
source.
- 12-July-2005 (beta)
- Restrict certain users from seeing UAL edr data. Routines changed: Welcome.cgi, ACARSLoader,
MainACARS.
- 11-July-2005 (beta)
- Enabled E-AMDAR as a separate data source. Routine changed: SelectFrame.
- Print out missing data prettier in the full track window. Routine changed: EdrOb.
- 29-Jun-2005 (beta)
- In the soundings display, changed the calculation of iCAPE (CAPE
for an interactive parcel) to only include the area at and above
the Level of Free Convection (LFC). (This area is indicated by
red hash marks.) Also, the LFC for the parcel (iLFC), if it
exists, is shown at the right of the plot. Routine changed: sdg.SkewTPlot.
- 27-June-2005 (oper and beta)
- All beta changes moved to operations
- Re-enabled the capability to load specific tail numbers or data
types, so longer time periods can be loaded without running out of
browser memory. All data are sent to the applet, but only the
requested data are stored in memory; the rest are discarded. Also
removed the lat/lon selection from the Load window, because that
doesn't work at present.
Routines changed: LoadFrame, ACARSLoader,
getACARS.cgi.
- 25-May-2005 (beta)
- Broke out E-AMDAR as a selectable data source category. (But this
will only work once the underlying processing has been changed,
which hasn't occurred yet.) Routines changed: MainACARS, SelectFrame
- 19-May-2005 (beta)
- Added an adjustable mileage marker. To use it, right-click with the
mouse and drag to create a labeled mileage marker with nautical
miles abd kilometers indicated. Routine changed:
map.ZoomCanvas.
- 11-May-2005 (beta)
- Added the FSL aircraft ID to the title that appears directly
under the SkewTPlot, to allow identification of the aircraft
when multiple soundings are displayed. Routine changed: ACARSSounding.
- Slightly adjusted the left justification of sounding titles
under the plot, so they don't start with a space when the model
is null. Routines changed: sdg.Sounding.
- 5-May-2005 (beta)
- Added Profiler locations as an optional overlay, and changed the
colors of RAOB sites plotted on the plan-view map. Routines changed: MainACARS, RAOB. Routines added:
PROFILER, PROFILERLoader, profiler.txt.
- 26-April-2005 (oper)
- WVSS-2 data are now flowing. To see only this
data, click on the
Select button and select
Sensor type: vapor, and Data Source:
not-TAMDAR.
- We fixed a tiny error in the standard atmosphere calculation
that caused a pressure error < 0.05 mb below 11 Km and a 0.1 mb
to 0.3 mb error above that.
- Pressure altitude is now correctly treated as a geopotential
height. See MJ
Mahoney's excellent discussion of altitude measures for more
information. (This changes very slightly the altitudes shown in
the sounding plots that correspond with a particular pressures.)
- We have implemented a web firewall. This is supposed to be
transparent, but if you encounter any new problems with access,
please let us know.
- 20-Apr-2005 (oper)
- All beta changes moved to the operational site.
- 19-Apr-2005 (beta)
- When multiple soundings are overlaid, the first sounding plotted
is plotted entirely in black, rather than in red (for
temperature), blue (for dp and wind), and green (for flight
track/hodograph). This was done for greater clarity when multiple
soundings are displayed. If only one sounding is displayed, the
traditional color scheme is used. Routine
changed: SkewTPlot.
- Conversion routines between pressure altitude and pressure fixed
to reflect that pressure altitude is defined as a
geopotential height, not a geometric
height. Routine changed:
Sounding. (In particular, methods getStdPressure and
getAltitude).
- For interpolated mandatory pressure levels, we now calculate the
appropriate geopotential height for the given pressure.
Previously, we interpolated the geopotential heights of the
observations straddling the mandatory level. Routine changed: Sounding.java. (In particular, method
makeMands.).
- 11-Mar-2005 (beta)
- For WVSS-II data, do not include position reports in
soundings. Routine changed:
ACARSSounding.
- For binary formats >= 9, and for vapor data, read the RHfromWVMR
(short int) and the 4 digit raw downlinked WVMR message (short
int). Routine changed: ACARSLoader.
- Added header information to the flight track window for vapor
reporting aircraft. Routine changed:
Aircraft.
- 8-Mar-2005 (beta)
- Changes to accommodate WVSS-II data: For binary formats >= 8, and
for vapor data (as distinct from TAMDAR data), we read RHfromWVMR
and RHQC along with dewpoint data. In the flight track window for
vaporObs, we display the RH and QC flag after the dewpoint.
Routines changed: ACARSLoader, VaporOb, Flight,
DataPack
- 7-Mar-2005 (beta)
- Changes to ensure that Flights are correctly differentiated. Obs
for the same tail number are considered parts of different flights
if either
- They are separated by 1 hr or more, or
- At least one of two adjacent obs is below 15,000 ft and the
time difference is 15 min or more.
- 4-Mar-2005 (beta)
- Slight change made in the buttons under the sounding display to
ensure that long sounding names don't slide off the left edge of
the button. (If they're too long, the names will be clipped on
the right side, which is the year.)Routine
changed lib.MyButton.
- 23-Feb-2005 (operations)
- All beta changes moved to operations.
- 22-Feb-2005 (beta)
- "CIMSS" soundings added. These are soundings taken by the
Wayne Feltz of the U. Wisconsin Aerobago team (see http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tamdar/).
These soundings are being taken in Memphis from 22 Feb to 10 March
2005, in support of the TAMDAR Great Lakes Fleet Experiment.
Routines changed/added in the sounding display
section: reply_setup.cgi, get_cimss.cgi.
- 18-Feb-2005 (beta)
- Location of sounding ID below the SkewTPlot moved slightly to the
left so as not to obscure dewpoints so much when multiple plots
are overlaid. Routines changed:
sdg.SkewTPlot.
- 7-Feb-2005 (beta)
- Icing information in soundings turned off for TAMDAR because we
want to keep the sounding displays as similar as possible between
1) the FSL Aircraft Display, 2) the FSL soundings (only) page, and
3) the AWIPS sounding display. Since the latter 2 will not
display levels without wind and temperature data (such as levels
at which icing is reported), we've turned the icing info off on
the soundings display only. (You can still see icing reports on
the plan view display, and by right-clicking a flight track.)
Routines changed: ACARSSounding.
- 4-Feb-2005 (beta)
- Added icing information to the soundings for TAMDAR observations
[But see the change immediately above].
Routines changed: ACARSSounding, Flight,
sdg.Sounding, sdg.SoundingLevel, sdg.SoundingLoader,
sdg.Stability, sdg.SkewTPlot.
- 2-Feb-2005 (beta)
- Added soundings from the 'dev' model, which is identical to the
'dev2' model except that the latter includes TAMDAR. Routine changed: Welcome.cgi
- Changed the soundings display to show the model immediately
beneath the sounding plot along with the site, sounding type, and
time. This was done to make it possible to distinguish soundings
from various models when they are overlaid. Routines changed: sdg.SkewTPlot, sdg.SoundingCanvas,
sdg.Sounding
- 1-Feb-2005 (beta)
- Added RAOB sites worldwide. Routines added:
RAOB.java, RAOBLoader.java; routine changed:
MainACARS.java.
- 28-Jan-2005 (beta)
- Corrected the start time of ascent soundings to be the time of the
lowest point with good temperature (rather than
the lowest point) to avoid the case of occasional TAMDAR obs
taken on the ground several hours before takeoff determining the
sounding time. Routine changed:
Flight.java.
- Corrected the liftedIndex routine to return MISSING when the
thickness of a 'sounding' is less than the 100mb parcel
thickness. Routine changed:
sdt/Stability.java.
- 21-Jan-2005 (beta)
- In the 'select' window, changed 'vg' to 'DEVG' to clarify that it
means 'Derived Equivalent Vertical Gust' data, provided by some
AMDAR aircraft.
- 12-Jan-2005 (oper)
- Canadian data are now flowing
- All beta changes moved to operations.
- 6-Jan-2005 (beta)
- Added option to display only Canadian data. Routine changed: SelectFrame.java.
- 4-Jan-2005 (beta)
- Fixed a small bug that caused observations that are part of a
sounding to not have a solid line drawn between them if the
lowest point of the sounding included bad data. Routine changed: MainACARS.java.
- 15-Dec-2004 (FRD operational and ITS operational)
- TAMDAR data are now flowing
- All beta changes moved to operations
- 13-Dec-2004 (beta)
- For aircraft data, don't skip levels when plotting the dewpoint
(i.e., if the dewpoint exists at both adjacent levels, plot a line
between the two dewpoints, otherwise plot no line). This done to
keep the dewpoint profile from appearing higher than the
temperature profile if the former has missing data. Routine changed: map.SkewTPlot.
- 10-Dec-2004 (operational)
- All beta changes moved to operations.
- 10-Dec-2004 (beta)
- We now receive and display by the cursor true airspeed for TAMDAR
obs. Routines changed: ACARSLoader, TAMDAROb,
Flight, DataPack. Format number for the input data is now
7.
- 9-Dec-2004 (beta and operational)
- Additional Chinese airports added. No routines
changed, but the version of airport_info.txt in the jar file was
updated.
- 26-Nov-2004 (beta)
- Changed map.ZoomPanel.stop to avoid a null pointer exception when
stop is called before the overlaysFrame is created. Routine changed: map.ZoomPanel.
- Changed VaporOb to not display dewpoint by the cursor if
the dewpoint is MISSING. Routine changed:
VaporOb.
- 22-Nov-2004 (beta)
- Changes to make use of GPS altitude from TAMDAR. The GPS altitude
is shown to the right of the pressure altitude by the cursor for
TAMDAR observations. Also, if the airport is known for a
sounding, the AGL is shown on the left of the
SkewT plot (to the right of the pressure altitude), and the AGL is
also shown as the rightmost column of the 'show text' window of
the soundings display. Routines changed:
ACARSLoader, TAMDAROb, map.SoundingLevel, map.Stability,
map.SoundingLoader, map.SkewTPlot, map.Sounding.
- 18-Nov-2004 (operatonal)
- All beta changes moved to operational.
- 29-Sep-2004 (beta)
- Changed name from "FSL ACARS Web Display" to "FSL Aircraft Data
Display". Routine changed: Welcome.cgi
- A little change to the show_at_cursor function to accomodate
TAMDAR data a little more cleanly. Routines
changed: Ob, VgOb, VaporOb, EdrOb, IceOb, TAMDAROb.
- 23-Sep-2004 (beta)
- Changes to make the applet reentrant, i.e., multiple copies of the
applet running under the same URL will not interfere with one
another. New routines: AircraftGroup,
map/MapTransform (contains the formerly static parts of
GeoPoint). Routines changed: SelectFrame, VORLoader,
AirportLoader, Ob, ACARSLoader, Flight, MainACARS, Aircraft, VOR,
Airport, map/ZoomPanel, map/ZoomCanvas, map/OverviewFrame,
map/GeoPoint.
- 21-Sep-2004 (beta)
- We no longer display dewpoints that are higher than the
temperature. Routine changed
sdg/SoundingLevel.
- Changes to support soundings from aircraft data (such as from
Japanese airlines) that report altitude based on the local
barometer setting. Portions of soundings that have altitudes based
on the local barometer setting are indicated by the temperature
curve being brown, and by an asterisk after the altitude in the
sounding text window. Routines changed:
sdg/SoundingLoader, sdg/Sounding, sdg/SkewTPlot,
sdg/SoundingLevel, sdg/Stability.
- 18-Sep-2004 (beta)
- Changes to support aircraft that report baroAltitude instead of
altitude. The variable data_descriptor now has a new meaning: 4
is added to it if the altitude was replaced with baroAltitude.
(Routines changed: MainACARS, Flight,
ACARSSounding)
- 6-20-Aug-2004 (beta)
- Changes to support TAMDAR. (Routines changed: TAMDAROb (new), VgOb, Ob,
Aircraft)
- 10-May-2004 (beta)
- Changed Labels to MyLabels to avoid the appearence of very large
fonts under linux. (Routines changed: MainACARS,
lib.MyLabel (new), lib.Slider.java.)
- 5-Dec-2003 (beta)
- Changed the display_priority method of MainACARS to keep the
previously-registered observation if two observations have the
same priority. This avoids whole flight tracks disappearing if
their obs are 'too' close together. (Routine
changed: MainACARS.)
- 20-Nov-2003 (beta)
- Changed altitude slider bar to use 500 ft increments. (Routines changed: getACARS.cgi.)
- 15-Oct-2003 (operational)
- All beta changes (see below) moved to the operational site.
- 9-Oct-2003 (beta)
- Change made to the script that provides data to avoid problems
that will occur when we move to a new web server that has bytes in
a different order. (Routines changed:
getACARS.cgi.)
- 29-Sep-2003 (beta)
- Support for data input format 3. The only difference between
format 2 and format 3 is that the latter expects lats and lons to
be (short)(degrees*182). This was done to avoid problems in the
way various machines write floats as binary data. (Routines changed: ACARSLoader.)
- 8-Sep-2003 (beta)
- day of month added to the time that appears near the cursor when
the cursor is over a data point (e.g., "1314Z/8 indicates the data
is from 1314 UTC on the 8th of the month). (Routines
changed: Ob.
- 19-Aug-2003 (beta)
- Added "all ACARS" and "all MDCRS" categories to select frame.
Also added "Canadian" category as a non-enabled place-holder.
(Routines changed: SelectFrame,
MainACARS)
- 14-Aug-2003 (beta)
- Added 'non-AMDAR' category to the select frame. (Routines changed: SelectFrame, MainACARS)
- 10-Aug-2003 (beta)
- Slight changes made to the mapping software library to accomodate
a different applet. Should cause no changes to this applet's
behavior. (Routines changed: map/OverviewFrame,
map/ZoomCanvas, map/ZoomPanel.)
- 24-July-2003 (beta)
- Tephigrams are now available on the sounding display. Click the
"SkewT/Tephi." button to toggle between SkewT's and Tephigrams.
(Routines changed: ACARSSoundingDriver,
sdg/SoundingCanvas, sdg/SoundingDriver, sdg/SoundingPanel,
sdg/SkewTPlot. Routine added: sdg/ThermoPack.)
- Can now toggle between two wind scales for the hodograph and the
plot on the left: 100 kts and 40 kts. (Routines
changed: sdg/SoundingCanvas, sdg/SoundingPanel, sdg/SkewTPlot.)
- Fixed bug in sdg/SkewTPlot.java that plotted bad wind speed values on
EDR reports.
- Changes made to decrease the amount of memory used by the
sounding package.
- 14-Apr-2003 (operational) and 5-Mar-2003 (beta)
- Several changes to make this compatible with Java Runtime Engine
1.4.2, used by Netscape 7 and Mozilla. (Routines
changed: MainACARS, Aircraft map/ZoomPanel, map/ZoomCanvas,
lib/MyButton, lib/MyUtil, lib/Slider)
- 24-Feb-2003 (operational)
- All beta changes (see below) moved to operations. The
Data Source and Icing options
won't function until the underlying processing is upgraded, which
will occur within a few weeks.
- Added 3 airports in the Carribian
- The routine that supports loading only a specific kind of data,
or only a specific lat/lon range, which had apparently been
broken for many months, has been repaired. Unless you have a
slow connection to the internet, you may find it faster to load
all the data in a particular time range, and then use the
'Select' window to display only the kind of data you want.
- 19-Feb-2003 (beta)
- Added support for experimental icing data from
Delta Airlines. These data support an FAA-funded experiment
managed by Marcia Politovich of NCAR. (Routines
changed: MainACARS, ACARSLoader, Aircraft, Flight, IceOb (new),
LoadFrame)
- Added support for the Data Source variable,
which has the following meanings. (Routines
changed: ACARSLoader, Flight, Ob, EdrOb, IceOb, VaOb, VaporOb,
VgOb, DataPack)
- ACARS - data found in only the ACARS
data stream (i.e., decoded by FSL)
- MDCRS - data found in only the MDCRS
data stream (i.e., decoded by ARINC)
- ACARS & MDCRS - data found in BOTH the
ACARS and MDCRS data streams.
- AMDAR - AMDAR data
- Added to the Select window several additional
options:
- The option to select on data source
- The option to select aircraft that measure
icing. (This is currently an
experimental data source.)
- The option to show only good wind and
temperature data.
Most notably, selecting this will remove
measurements of edr (eddy dissipation rate) and icing
that do not include wind and temperature information.
- (Routines changed: SelectFrame
MainACARS)
- Added an announcement below the map of what data have been
selected. This appears in red when anything other than all
data have been selected. (Routines changed:
MainACARS)
- 7-Feb-2003 (beta)
- Changed the speed slider to not cut off all data above 200 kts.
(Routine changed MainACARS.java.)
- 6-Jan-2003 (beta)
- Changed arrangement of overlays to be consistent with the new code
in the 'map' package. (Routines changed
MainACARS.java and many in 'map' package.)
- Added ARTCC boundaries as an overlay
- 16-Jul-2002 (beta and oper)
- Changed processing to better identify US airports. no change to java code
- 15-Jul-2002 (beta and oper)
- Fixed wind barbs on sounding plots to be on the correct side for
the southern hemisphere. (Routine changed
sdg.SoundingLoader.java and sdg.SkewTPlot.java.)
- Fixed the spacing on the 2-line title at the top of ACARS Skew-T
plots to be a little clearer. (For some implementations of java
they overlapped a bit. (Routine changed
sdg.SkewTPlot.java)
- Several new airports added.
- Upgraded the java libraries: lib, map, sdg to be consistent with
other FSL applets. This should cause no new behavior.
- 16-Apr-2002 (beta)
- Fixed wind barbs on sounding plots to be on the correct side for
the southern hemisphere. (Routine changed
sdg.SoundingLoader.java and sdg.SkewTPlot.java.)
- 15-Apr-2002 (beta and oper)
- Fixed the 21-Mar-2002 correction of wind barbs on the plan-view
display. The 21-March code caused problems near the dateline.
(Routine changed map.GeoPoint.java.)
- 21-Mar-2002 (beta and oper)
- Corrected an error that caused winds near the edges of the
display to be plotted incorrectly, particularly near the equator.
Listed values for wind direction have always been correct,
however, the barbs were not plotted with right orientation. (Routine changed map.GeoPoint.java.)
- Corrected an error that caused wind directions on soundings from
the RUC and MAPS models to be incorrect. MAPS and RUC
winds at longitudes other than 95 West should have been rotated
by -sin(25°)*(-95 - longitude), where longitude is in degrees,
with E being positive, and the rotation is in degrees. (I.e., a N
wind in the RUC domain near the E coast is a NE wind with
respect to true N.) This error caused wind directions
near the E and W edges of the MAPS/RUC domain to be incorrect by
as much as 18°.
- 13-Feb-2002 (beta) 21-Mar-2002 (oper)
- Cleaned up map background around US
- Information frames can now be expanded and more information will
show in them.
- Added "NOAA / Forecast Systems Lab" credit line
- 29-Jan-2002 (oper) and 11-Jan-2002 (beta)
- Changed screen location of some components to allow easier use on
small screens and clearer screen shots in publications.
- Added a
minimum spacing slider to show barbs more
clearly (controls
minimum spacing in pixels between displayed obs (this also speeds
up repainting the screen). This is particularly helpful when
displaying wind barbs.
- You can now set initial defaults (follow the
Set initial
defaults link) which will allow you to have the page open with
the particular display (e.g., Europe or Asia) you wish. (And the
Default button will always return you to that display.)
- Barbs in the Southern Hemisphere now have flags on the correct
side of the arrow (pointing to lower pressure).
- Information at the cursor no longer runs off the screen when the
cursor is near the edge of the map.
- U.S. VORs are now an available overlay.
- Color coding of vertical gust data is changed to better reflect
turbulent conditions.
- The adiabats on the Skew-T background were changed slightly.
- The code was upgraded to be more modular, and more consistent
with java version 1.1, and other FSL/FRD applets.
- 31-Dec-2001 (beta and oper)
- Several additional airports added (airport_info.txt)
- 28-Nov-01 (beta)
- Added airport Islamabad.
- 19-Nov-01 (beta)
- Lufthansa data added, and additional airports.
(airport_info.txt)
- 23-Feb-01 (beta)
- Changed minimum gap between "Flights" from 20 min to 25 min to
better display text from some AU flights that have obs 21 min
apart. (ACARSLoader.java)
- 4-Jan-01 (beta and oper)
- No longer aborts on bad hourly input files; instead only the bad
hour is skipped, and this is reported in the information window
under the map. Also, additional airports have been added, and
some airport locations corrected.
- 20-Nov-00
- All beta processing to date moved to the main java site.
- 20-Nov-00
- Cleaned up processing of bad input files slightly. Loading is
aborted if a bad file is found, but bad files should
no longer generate java errors.
- 14-Nov-00
- Added support for Vertical Gust data from some AMDAR reports. The
display can be restricted to these data
via the select button.
- 8-Nov-00
- Changed the MainACARS routine to allow a start time to be
specified in the optional applet parameters (in support of the
demo java page).
- 6-Nov-00
- Changed the 'load other soundings' functionality to load the MAPS
or RUC soundings for the hour before and the hour after a
displayed aircraft sounding, by default. (The sounding window
doesn't look any different.)
- Added logging of when the hodograph window is changed between
flight track and hodograph.
- Repaired a subtle error that caused the highlighting of wind
and track informatiion on the sounding display to be
occasionally in error.
- 2-Nov-00
- For aircraft soundings, the flight track is shown instead of
the hodograph, optionally. Use the "Toggle button" in the
hodograph window to switch between the two.
- US projection changed to not include so much of Mexico.
- zooming function improved.
- plotting function changed slightly to ensure that all relevant
geopolitical segments get plotted (at no reduction in plotting
speed).
- minor error in plotting sounding flight tracks corrected: a line
is no longer drawn through points on sounding tracks that have a
data descriptor of 3 (these often indicate a bad lat/lon).
- 27-Sep-00 (main site), and 24-Aug-00 ('world' site)
- A long-term error in wind directions has been corrected.
Previously, wind directions were not corrected
for the angular deviation of compass directions away from the
center of the projected map. That is, for example, North winds
always pointed straight up, whereas the North direction varied
with longitude. This has now been corrected, and wind directions
are consistent with geographic directions everywhere.
- The default US map has been changed back to Lambert Conformal
Conic Projection, but with a larger coverage than on the previous
conformal US map.
- The zooming function has been completely rewritten so each
zoom generates a new Lambert Conformal Conic Projection
with One Standard Parallel. The standard parallel is taken as
the center of the zoomed region. Thus, North will always be
directly up in the center of any map.
This new functionality has some implications:
- When you zoom in on a region, the region that results from
the zoom won't exactly match your zoom box, because the
old and new maps will have different projections.
- You can zoom across the dateline and the poles.
- The overview window generally will show where on the globe
your zoomed region is, except when the region extends
across a pole.
- 2-Aug-00 ('world' site)
- World map implemented (see the 'world' button atop the applet).
In addition, the 'Reset Map' button was changed to a 'US'
button. Also, the map projection for the US was changed from
Lambert Conformal to Cylindrical Equidistant. Note that the
world map supports zooms across the dateline.
- 19-Apr-00 (operational), 15-Apr-00 (beta)
- Added color coding by wind speed as an option. Also fixed a bug
that occasionally wrote long wind barbs for missing data.
- Several changes were made to the sounding display to make it
consistent with the
Soundings
from FSL page, as follows:
- Interactive parcel trajectories: click on the plot to
raise a parcel from the clicked point. Click
with the right button to call up a dialog that lets you
choose td, t, and p for the parcel. Thanks to Tom
Whittaker of the University of Wisconsin for providing
the core of the code that performs this task.
- You can now enter an arbitrary 'Site' location as
latitude,longitude. For instance: 40.23,-105.78, where
the latitude and longitude are in decimal (not
degrees.minutes), and West and South are negative.
- On parcel trajectories, a black horizontal line is shown
at the parcel's lifted condensation level (SkewTPlot.java).
- The altitude of the cursor location is now indicated
near the cursor, along with pressure and temperature
(SkewTPlot.java, Sounding.java).
- You can now 'right-click' with the mouse on a flight track to
show all of the available data for that aircraft in a text
window. (Previously, you had to 'shift-click'. That
option is still available.)
- 15-Feb-00
- Updated airport information
- 30-Oct-99
- You can now click on the color bar to restore the complete
altitude range.
- Color-coding for eddy dissipation rate data has been improved:
edr values of 0.05 (the minimum) show as light blue, 0.15 shows
as purplish, >= 0.25 shows as red.
- When vertical acceleration or edr data are being displayed, the
color bar shows as black, because the color-coding is not by
altitude.
- Fixed a bug that sometimes caused flights to disappear when a
portion of the flight was zoomed in on. (FLight.java now saves
the first and/or last GOOD lat/lon as the start and end points.
Previously the first and last location could be missing data.)
- 29-Sep-99
- A small change to the
load non-ACARS sounding(s)
function: RAOB
input data now can show minutes. This was made to accomodate
CLASS soundings make at Louisville this month in support of a
test of UPS humidity measurements.
- 3-Sep-99
- Color-coding has been added for vertical acceleration and eddy
dissipation rate data. When these data are loaded and/or
selected for display, the color coding shows 'normal' data in
blue and 'interesting' data in red, and missing data as the
bad-data color. The color bar on the right hasn't yet been
updated to reflect this.
- 29-Apr-99
- Fixed a bug in the processing of vapor-sensing aircraft that
caused the dewpoint to be 0º to 5º (C) too cold, with the
largest errors occurring at high mach numbers (which occur at
high altitudes). Generally errors in dewpoint below 15,000 ft
have been less than 3º C.
- Added a sort of sounding data by altitude so we don't get those
nasty-looking jags when an aircraft doesn't uniformly ascend or
descend. Also speeded up the sounding plot generation a little
bit, by limiting the maximum number of sounding points to 50,
and by writing slightly more efficient code.
- 1-Apr-99
- Corrected a bug generated on 30-Mar that caused missing
dewpoint data to be plotted at the temperature value.
- Also corrected the java data-subset-loader that didn't treat
missing data correctly. It now does, and this automatically
fixed the problem that caused gaps in the dewpoint line on
sounding plots when missing dewpoint data occured.
- Also fixed vertical acceleration data; it had been referenced
to 0-g when full data sets were loaded, but 1-g when a data
subset was loaded. It is now referenced to 0-g. That is,
light turbulence shows up as deviations from 0, not as
deviations from 1.
- 30-Mar-99
- Corrected an error that showed dewpoints higher than temperature.
- 8-Feb-99
- Fixed an error that occasionally caused both the ascent and
descent portion of a flight track to appear on the same sounding.
- Rearranged the order of items on the web page above the display so
that the most-used links appear directly above the display.
- 4-Feb-99
- Can limit the data
initially loaded by location and data type by using the
Set initial defaults link on the java display.
Can also limited the data subsequently loaded by setting
parameters in the window that comes up when the
Load button is clicked.
- 25-Jan-99
- New Web server. Coding between FSL tailnumbers and true
tailnumbers remains the same as at the old web server. The new
server is a Sun running Solaris 5.6 and Apache 1.3
- 25-Jan-99
- Solid lines connect data points that can probably make useful
soundings. Lines are shown if:
- Barbs are not being shown, and
- The max altitude of the flight is > 10,000 ft, and
- The minimum (pressure) altitude of the aircraft is
within 2000 ft of the (true) elevation of the airport, and
- There is no data gap greater than 2500 ft in altitude
for data points below 10,000 ft.
- Data points taken within the last 20 min (with respect to the
latest time loaded) are plotted at twice the size of other
points (unless barbs are being displayed).
- From the sounding window, Profiler soundings can be loaded,
along with RAOBs and MAPS/RUC soundings.
- The time of each observation is shown on sounding plots (on the
left) and in the sounding text readout.
- Negative pressure altitudes as well as positive ones are now
shown on the sounding plot (on the left).
- Text printout for soundings and flight tracks are cleaned up a bit.
- 27-Oct-98
- For those aircraft that experimentally measure
- vertical acceleration
- eddy dissipation rate, or
- dewpoint
this extra data is now loaded, and you can select to display
only those aircraft that measure each of these variables by using the
select button. This is primarily for the scientists
who are working with these data -- the quality of these data is
particularly volatile.
- Textual data for entire aircraft can be generated by
shift-clicking anywhere on an aircraft's flight track. The
data will appear in a separate window. (You can
cut-and-paste the data to transfer it to other programs for
processing or printing.) See help for
information on the data quality flag F, and
other details.
- More actions (text requests, roaming) are
logged on our server (no time penalty on your end).
- 13-Oct-98
- Zoomable soundings with hodographs
- Actions (zoom, soundings generated, barbs requested, etc.) are
logged on our server (no time penalty on your end).
- 11-Aug-98
- First java version!
Prepared by Bill Moninger,
Bill.Moninger@noaa.gov,
303-497-6435
Last modified: Wed Dec 14 11:13:14 MST 2005