August 2021 software release

The August 2021 release of our software provides many new features, improvements and fixes!

ecCodes

ecCodes, the heart of GRIB and BUFR handling, brings several features and bug fixes in version 2.23.0.

Note that the high-level Python interface (in eccodes/high_level/*) was always experimental and will be removed in the next release.
Please use cfgrib and pdbufr instead.

Also note that ecCodes' Python 2 interface is no longer being developed. Users are strongly advised to migrate to Python 3.

Magics

Magics, ECMWF's plotting library, brings more improvements in version 4.9.0 including :

• A first implementation of automatic styling for wind is ready to test: as for the automatic contour styling magics will try try to interpret the metadata and apply a predefined style. Please report any issue and do not hesitate to send feedback. 
  •  
  • 1 new magics parameter is available wind_automatic_setting if set to ecmwf, magics will try to find a predefined style. 
•  Geopoints items with missing values are now ignored. 
•  Scaling for parameter mudlp has been added

Metview

Metview 5.13.0 brings a mix of new features, fixes and improvements including:

• a raft of new Python/Macro functions:
  • shear_deformation(),
  • stretch_deformation(),
  • virtual_temperature(),
  • specific_humidity_from_dewpoint(),
  • pressure_derivative()
• new options in the GRIB-based mask() and rmask() functions to make it easier to use masked data in computations
• a new way to specify a polar stereographic area to plot, using the centre of the area rather than corners
• a powerful new way to specify how to thin wind arrows in a plot
• the Regrid module has a new interpolation method: Voronoi statistics
• Qt6 support
• various smaller fixes and improvements
• see the release notes!

Metview's masking functions now have two different ways to mask GRIB data

Metview's new deformation functions have a gallery example on readthedocs

Metview's Python interface version 1.8.0 brings new features, including:

• new functions/methods on Fieldset to give an overview of contents:
  • fs.describe() and fs.ls()
  • see Jupyter notebook example
• new GRIB filtering function, select(), offers different filtering options from read() and is faster
  • see Jupyter notebook example
  • new shorthand way to select parameters from Fieldsets, e.g.
    • g = fs["t"]

    • g = fs["t500"]

    • g = fs["t500hPa"]

    • see docs
• the Fieldset constructor can now take a list of paths to GRIB files or a wildcard, e.g.
  • a = mv.Fieldset(path=["/path1/to/data1.grib", "relpath/data2.grib"])
a = mv.Fieldset(path="data/*.grib")

Metview's new Python functions help explore GRIB data in interactive Python environments such as Jupyter

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

The software versions of this release are available on all ECMWF computer systems as "new" versions. Versions on conda should be available in the coming days. If you encounter any issues please feel free to send feedback to Software.Support@ecmwf.int.