We are busy working on a new CDAT release version CDAT -  v5.0. This big release will bring several new exciting features to the CDAT community. We expect to have the 'Beta' version ready for release in October 2007. We will be releasing CDAT v4.3 in August with a small subset of features listed below.

The new features include: 

 - LAS CDAT interface to IPCC data
 - New VCDAT  - Light version
 - Point & click edit in VCS canvas with GUI
 - TrueType fonts
 - Direct PostScript output 
 - NetCDF 4.0  with data compression
 - VisTrails 
 - New numPy which will replace pyFor
 - Google Earth with CDAT
 - iCDAT- Adobe Flash web application
 - Trac source repository

One of the most exciting addition into CDAT to be introduced in version 5.0 is the new look and feel + new capabilities of VCDAT - the CDAT's GUI interface. We added several very useful navigational features to the standard VCDAT GUI and linked it to the so-called VCDAT Light. You will be able to choose to work in VCDAT (full version) or in VCDAT Light, which introduces VCS GUI canvas with point and click template edit capabilities and a very clean and easy user interface. You will be able to switch back and forth between the more sophisticated full version of VCDAT and the VCDAT Light in the same session.  

The navigating features added to both versions of VCDAT include extended variable listing that includes the variables shape and long name together with the units. The display divides the variables into 1D, 2D, 3D, etc. dimensions groups. We think you will come to love that feature. See the example screen below

Once you selected a variable you will see the variables info displayed at the top of the window.

Another great feature is the ability to lock and unlock any dimension. This is done by clicking on the little lock icon at the top of each axis dimension on the left side of the dimensions navigation sliders.  Click once and you will lock the lock, click again and you will unlock it. 

Often one needs to look at the zoom of a particular dimension, say only a window in time, or particular region in (lon, lat) space or particular height region. You will now have the ability to choose say a height region, lock the height dimension, and now whenever you plot any variable that has this dimention, it will be displayed within chosen height region only, so effectively the default height region is now the chosen min and max values.  If you are curious to see the full height but do not want to reset the new default, you can move the sliders without unlocking the height dim.  If on the other hand you want to reset the defaults, just unlock the lock and choose new region, then lock the dim again to keep it as new default.  You will find it extremelly handy at times. The locks work also on the dimensions/axis order and are very handy when you need to change the pressure levels to be displayed from highest to lowest.

VCDAT Light  is meant to be a 'light' version of VCDAT and as such, it is stripped from the template edit and variables calculation window, as shown in the images above. The template edit capabilities are moved to the new VCS GUI canvas, with point and click edit feature, where you will be able to for examplpe grab the horizontal colormap and drag it to become a vertical colormap of the length and width of your choice. By default, when you open a canvas in VCDAT Light - it will come up as a VCS GUI canvas. You can switch to a standard canvas, but you will have to close the GUI one first. In the full VCDAT, the only available canvas is the standard canvas.  

We are eager to see how you will like the new features,  please give us an input on your thoughts on that.

VisTrails, while originally (and solely) developed by researchers at the University of Utah that provides support for data exploration and visualization, is being applied to climate data analysis and visualization as part of the SciDAC2 Visualization and Analytics Center for Enabling Technology (VACET). It is a new scientific workflow management system. Few CDAT modules had been already connected with the VisTrails through the common interfaces and you can see that one can now use the visual workflow interface to connect CDAT module boxes and perform calculations in CDAT to produce the desired plot. 

The result of the CDAT run can be viewed for example in a spreadsheet application:

Live Access Server (LAS) is a software that provides visualization and subsetting of multi-dimensional scientific data for Web users, enabling visualization, subsetting, and reformatting. On-the-fly visualization makes it possible to explore the dataset entirely within a Web browser environment. Should further analysis at the desktop be desirable subsetting allows the scientist to download small units of data that move efficiently on the Internet. Reformatting makes it simple to ingest the data into the scientist’s choice of desktop environments.

The new LAS CDAT web interface enables browsing and downloading of the IPCC ESG climate model simulations data holdings resident at PCMDI, LLNL (Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison). In order to view the IPCC ESG data you need to have an accout on the ESG. If you don't have one, just go to ESG and request an accout by filling out a short form.

You can enter the LAS CDAT with the user/password that you will get for the ESG server. After successful log in you will be presented with the high level overview of the ESG data holdings. 

The bar at the top shows you that you are logged in and enables you to Logout. It also has a link to the Index of all the data holding.

The window on the left is a menu bar. To plot a variable you will need to choose a Dataset, a Variable and Constraints. The current selection is highlighted by the bold face font. As you can see we are now in 'Datasets' menu. 

In the right window you will see the top index of all the experiments. Click on the experiment you want to explore to see the all the datasets belonging to this type of experiment. For example click on 'amip' and then on 'ukmo_hadgem1' and you will see the following window:

Choose a variable and then click red letters 'Next' on the right hand side of the window. You will now be able to constrain you  selection for plotting by choosing a view (a line plot, lat/lon, Hovmoller plot, or volume plot),  an output (plot type like boxfill, isofill etc, or NetCDF) and a region (full region or a continent or a region) . You can also select your exact lon/lat region coordinates. Then select time and plot size and continent plotting options. When you are satisfied with your selection click on 'Next' on the right hand side of the window. 

The window will appear notifying you that CDAT LAS is working on your plot:

Next this window will close and the plot will appear in a new window:

Experiment with selecting a region with the mouse by clicking and dragging the mouse, as we did in this example. 

If you select the 'NetCDF' output, you will be presented with the link to where to get the data from, you can right click on the link and save the data to you hard drive.

We hope you will love it.