Blog from March, 2017

This week saw the March 2017 release of the standard ECMWF software packages. This month's release brings for ecCodes updates on the support of GRIB parameters and improvements on the BUFR decode performance and on the keys iterator. These changes are required for the next IFS cycle Cy45r1. This version of ecCodes was also used for the March 2017 Training course: ecCodes: BUFR data decoding and encoding software. There are smaller incremental updates on ODB_API, Magics and Metview.

Reminder: Starting with the November 2016 release all packages now use ecCodes as their default library to decode/encode GRIB data, instead of GRIB_API. While we are confident that ecCodes is to a high degree backwards compatible with GRIB_API, we strongly recommend good testing before using the software in your operational environments. In case you prefer to continue using GRIB_API for now, we provide a minor update release of this package, but recommend that you move to ecCodes eventually, since new features will only be implemented in ecCodes.

Metview 4.8.4 is built at ECMWF with all the versions of our libraries listed in the table below, and all are included in the March 2017 Metview Bundle.

Magics 2.32 introduces a new gradient shading style. This will also be available in the upcoming Metview 5.0, along with new editor features to handle it.