Aircraft reports visualize traffic avoiding Ukraine and Libya

First of all, I'd like to express deepest condolences for lives lost in
Ukraine.

Meteo-France publishes near-real time coverage maps of meteorological
observation reports.
http://www.meteo.fr/special/minisites/monitoring/DATA_COVERAGE/dcover.html

The aircraft reports indicates there are voids over Ukraine and Lybia.
http://www.meteo.fr/special/dde/monitoring/DATA_COVERAGE/PNG/BEFORE_SCREENING/avions.00.assim_cpl.png
(URL points to a file which will be overwritten everyday)

maintenance outage of SENDAI and WAKAMATSU wind profilers

RTH Tokyo issued an announcement:

http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/raw/no/nojp01.rjtd..txt
(note the URL points to a file that is overwritten by following messages)

NOJP01 RJTD 230133
SUBJECT:OUT OF SERVICE INFORMATION
THE OBSERVATION SITES OF WIND PROFILER INCLUDED IN IUPC41-50 RJTD
WILL BE OUT OF SERVICE THE FOLLOWING SCHEDULE.
SITE DATE PERIOD
47590 SENDAI 30-JUL ABOUT 8 HOURS BETWEEN 00UTC TO 08UTC
47590 SENDAI 31-JUL ABOUT 8 HOURS BETWEEN 00UTC TO 08UTC
47590 SENDAI 1-AUG ABOUT 8 HOURS BETWEEN 00UTC TO 08UTC
47570 WAKAMATSU 28-JUL ABOUT 8 HOURS BETWEEN 00UTC TO 08UTC
RTH TOKYO=

EUMETNET: TAC TEMP reports to be stopped November

Source: Enrico's posting to WMO/CBS/IPET-DRMM forum
https://groups.google.com/a/wmo.int/forum/#!topic/cbs-ipet-drmm/ut1yTCOUlUQ

Final Report of WMO/CBS/IPET-DRMM-II meeting published on WIS Wiki

The meeting page of ICT-ISS
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/WIS/wiswiki/tiki-index.php?page=ict_iss-meeting2014
is being prepared now. And I found the final report of IPET-DRMM-II
http://wis.wmo.int/file=1051 there.

"jmd" metadata tools updated for WCMP1.3

A few years ago I made an experimental generator tool of WIS Discovery Metadata, called "jmd".  It is found at http://www.gisc.kishou.go.jp/xsd/jmd0.1/.

During the work of writing guideline for WCMP 1.3, I need to create many metadata records as example. It was painful to write raw XML and correct it by modify-validate-fix cycle, so I remembered the "jmd" tool. So I've updated the tool to generate modern style of ISO19139 according to the new WMO profile.

default CRS for meteorological data

There is an argument (again) that all coordinates in CF should have CRS specification.
http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/pipermail/cf-metadata/2014/057478.html

My thought:

- I agree Jim says default CRS is needed for backward compatibility.

- The default should be WGS84 http://epsg.io/4326

- For NWP model data, even if the modeller says the coordinates are spherical, that means only the equations are spherical.  I've never seen surface elevation and observations are injected *after* coordinate conversion.

- For observational data, I hope the data source is migrated well to WGS84.  Archived data is an issue, but that can't be an excuse to continue to create the issue.

Similar argument should exist for vertical CRS.  I think it is convenient to use "MSL height" http://epsg.io/5714 which has no clear definition as an default.

Asperatus and WMO International Cloud Atlas

Around 2011 and 2012, there appeared a movement to create a new cloud classification called Undulatus Asperatus and work with WMO to give it official recognition.
http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/asperatus-update/comment-page-2/

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324251504578579204045089848

It was pretty impressive that the Royal Met Soc was supporting the idea:
http://www.rmets.org/asperatus-new-cloud-variety

Recently I learned that CIMO (Commission for Instrument and Methods of Observation) took responsibility of revising the International Cloud Atlas (ICA), and established a task team. The team had a meeting in 2013 and the report is available:
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/IMOP/reports/2013/CIMO-TT-ICA_FinalRep.pdf#page=20

Their recommendation is that the Asperatus cloud would be added not as a new Genera to existing ten (such as Cumulus or Altostratus), but as a new supplementary feature.

That should be a feasible compromise, since it has little impact of realtime synoptic meteorology, while skywatchers will have autholized terminology to describe the cloud with distinct appearance.

Recent document submitted to coming CIMO session says the task team is expected to finalize the revision of ICA by the end of 2015, and then it has to be authorized by some upper bodies, at least by the Executive Council of WMO which was held June every year.  So the new ICA will be available in the latter half of 2016, if everything goes perfectly.