Quarterly Update: September 2021
DAWG charter status
After the SuperDARN Workshop, the PIEC decided to narrow the scope of the DAWG to focus only on the RST. As a result of this decision, we had to rewrite our charter.
The revised version was provided on 8 July 2021. If we haven’t received any feedback by 15 October 2021 (one month from this report’s deadline), we will consider the charter approved.
EDIT (16/09/2021): we have now been notified that the PIEC approved the charter in mid-July.
Evaluation of fitACF 3.0 and despecking routine
Representatives from the PIEC and the DAWG had a meeting in early August to discuss the way forward with fitACF 3.0 (view meeting summary). A key outcome of that meeting was:
“PIs need to take a keen interest in, and share responsibility for, the quality of the fitted data from their own radars. Therefore, we invite them to actively participate in the evaluation of fitACF 3.0 for their own radars.”
To support PI participation, we have provided sample IDL code for you to adapt. We note that some PIs have already been evaluating fitACF 3.0 for their own radars. Each PI can decide for themselves whether any further evaluation is necessary.
All information relating to the evaluation of FitACF 3.0 and the despecking routine is being hosted on the DAWG website. We welcome PI contributions to this website. The webpage was updated in September with the following new information:
- 2D histograms comparing the power, velocity, spectral width and elevation from fitACF v2.5 and v3.0 for 4 radars
- Sample IDL code for determining the 2D histograms
- Sample IDL code to repeat the despecking routine analysis
- Explanation of external noise effects in lag 0 power and phase
- Comparisons of elevation angles calculated from the measured lag 0 phase and the fitted phase
- Response to the request to add a despecking command line option to
make_fit
Please contact Pasha and Emma as soon as possible if you have questions or feedback about the fitACF 3.0 evaluation. Please don’t wait for a formal meeting to have these discussions.
Updates to hardware file format
The TDIFF task force has implemented the approved changes to the hdw.dat file format and software as a draft modification to the RST. We would appreciate it if you could review and test these changes to ensure the results for your radar(s) are accurate. Please contact Evan Thomas with any questions/feedback, or leave a comment on GitHub.
PI representative for DAWG
The Working Group Guidelines state that:
One to two PIs will be designated as primary representatives of the PIEC for each WG to facilitate ongoing communication between the PIEC and the WG.
Please advise which PIs are the representatives for the DAWG.
RST update
RST 4.6 was released in August 2021. Please see the Zenodo site for a description of the new release and to download the software. Please use this release for testing fitACF 3.0.