Data Visualization Working Group PI Report

Date: 2023-05-11

The latest major release of pyDARN was version 3.1 (and patch release 3.1.1) which happened in Dec 2022 (and Mar 2023). We encourage users to test the compatibility of the software with their individual computers and let us know if there are any problems.

Important updates in pyDARN 3.1 and 3.1.1 include:

• Full Cartopy coastline plotting options for all spatial plots
• NEW coastline​ keyword in method calls
• Full Cartopy integration for plotting in geographic and AACGM V2 coordinates for grid and fan plots
• Completed polar coordinate convection maps including reference vector and many customization options
• Improved ACF plotting
• New HALF SLANT​range estimation for RTP
• ICE and ICW support

Important updates from pyDARNio 1.2.0 and 1.2.1 include:

• Handling of extra fields in FitACF 3.0 coming in the next RST release, including the name of the ACF fitting algorithm used (algorithm), the value of TDIFF used to calculate the elevation angles (tdiff), and more descriptive field names for the elevation angle fields in FitACF 3.0 (elv_error & elv_fitted)
• More flexibility around optional fields for all file types.
• Updates and memory improvements for Borealis file io.
• Fixed the depreciation of np.str​ in numpy to avoid errors on importing pyDARN and pyDARNio.

The DVWG working group has submitted a manuscript entitled “pyDARN: A Python Software for Visualizing SuperDARN Radar Data” to Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences. The manuscript summarizes the functionality and the utility of pyDARN to the broader space science community. It is now published and can be cited as:

Shi X, Schmidt M, Martin CJ, Billett DD, Bland E, Tholley FH, Frissell NA, Khanal K, Coyle S, Chakraborty S, Detwiller M, Kunduri B and McWilliams K (2022) pyDARN: A Python software for visualizing SuperDARN radar data. Front. Astron. Space Sci. https://doi.org/10.3389/fspas.2022.1022690