McIDAS at 50 Years

Abstract

With the dramatic increase in meteorological observational datasets over the past half century, there is an essential need to organize, display, interact with, and generate meteorological products. This need is ever increasing as more observational datasets have become available, especially from satellites. During the 1970s, several projects began developing interactive processing software systems. One of these projects was the Man computer Interactive Data Access System (McIDAS). Today, McIDAS is over 50 years old, has seen five generations of development, and is ever evolving onto the latest computer technology. As an extensible system, McIDAS is employed in a wide set of applications across meteorology, including weather forecasting, atmospheric science research, and education. Over these five decades, McIDAS has been instrumental in facilitating advancements in meteorology such as the development of derived atmospheric motion vectors and unique meteorological displays. Contributions McIDAS has made to meteorology and remote sensing are illustrated via examples from NOAA Operations, Spain’s Agencia Estatal de Meteorologia (AEMET), NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC), and the College of DuPage. McIDAS is also used in special weather forecasting situations at NOAA, NASA, and the U.S. Antarctic Program, as well as at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for aviation accident investigations. McIDAS continues to visualize imagery from the latest meteorological satellites while utilizing available emerging computer technologies. Beyond these ongoing transformations, McIDAS will maintain the use of extensible data readers that facilitate consistent interactive visualization and analysis capabilities, leveraging the strengths of McIDAS in satellite display and analysis.