2. MET Release Information

2.1. MET Release Notes

When applicable, release notes are followed by the GitHub issue number which describes the bugfix, enhancement, or new feature (MET GitHub issues). Important issues are listed in bold for emphasis.

2.1.1. MET Version 13.0.0-beta1 Release Notes (20260205)

Enhancements

  • Minimize the use of temporary files in Stat-Analysis (#2698).

  • Resolve runtime differences for different GNU/Intel optimization levels for PBL heights in PB2NC (#3110).

  • Enhance Grid-Diag to compute mutual information (#3171).

  • Enhance MET Python embedding and grid specification strings to support LAEA grids (#3230).

  • Resolve several SonarQube Reliability issues in MET’s develop branch (#3253).

  • Refine handling of missing data for orographic corrections (#3270).

  • Enhance the MET tools to return consistent exit codes (#3278).

  • Enhance the “GEOG_MATCH” interpolation method to print a WARNING about missing topography and land/sea mask inputs (#3285).

  • Enhance Point2Grid to make the default output value configurable (#3297).

  • Refine the logic for setting the default masking “FULL” grid in the MET tools (#3298).

  • Enhance PB2NC and IODA2NC to set the “quality_mark_thresh” configuration option as an actual threshold (#3307).

Bugfixes

  • Fix the logic to apply “set_attr_grid” before “ShiftRight” (#3255).

  • Fix ASCII2NC hang when run with an empty input file (#3266).

  • Fix support for the “set_attr_grid” config option when defining the verification domain (#3293).

  • Fix dependency checks and compile flag defaults in compile_MET_all.sh (#3317).

Repository, build, and test

  • Deprecate and remove the “–enable-mode-graphics” configuration option and corresponding “plot_mode_field” utility (#3322).

METbaseimage testing environment

2.2. MET Upgrade Instructions

This section summarizes and highlights important changes to MET since version 12.2.0, including:

  • Adding new or deprecating existing tools.

  • Modifying command line options.

  • Modifying configuration file options.

  • Modifying existing output file formats, such as new or modified ASCII or NetCDF file formats.

  • Changing existing output data values generated by MET, typically due to fixing bugs that were computing incorrect output.

  • Any other relevant details needed to upgrade from the MET version 12.1.0 to 12.2.0.

2.2.1. MET Version 13.0.0 Upgrade Instructions

New or deprecated tools

MET version 13.0.0 adds or removes the following tools:

  • The plot_mode_field utility to visualize the NetCDF output generated by the MODE tool has been deprecated and removed to reduce MET’s external library dependencies, including the Cairo, Freetype, and Pixman libraries and the Ghostscript Fonts package. Users are encouarged to visualize the NetCDF output from MODE using the plot_data_plane utility and/or using functionality provided in METplotpy.

Command line option changes

MET version 13.0.0 adds, modifies, or removes the following command line options:

  • Point2Grid adds a new “-default_value” command line option to override the default output grid value of bad data (NA or -9999).

Configuration file changes

MET version 13.0.0 adds, modifies, or removes the following configuration options:

  • The PB2NC and IODA2NC “quality_mark_thresh” configuration file option can now be set as a threshold string or integer, as before.

    • When processing GDAS surface observations with PB2NC, consider setting “quality_mark_thresh = <=2||==9;” to retain high quality surface observations (1 and 2) plus those ignored by the data assimilation system (9).

    • While IODA2NC did previously set “quality_mark_thresh = 0;” in the configuration file, it was not actually applied by IODA2NC and no quality mark filtering was performed. Changing the default to “quality_mark_thresh = NA;”, which always evaluates to true, maintains that earlier default behavior. However, changing this setting now applies the expected filtering logic.

  • Setting the mask grid to “FULL” has been removed from the default configuration files for Point-Stat, Grid-Stat, Pair-Stat, and Ensemble-Stat to produce more intuitive behavior. However, if no spatial masking region is requested in the configuration file, then the “FULL” grid will automatically be added, as noted in Section 5.2.24.

  • Grid-Diag configuration file

    • The “mask.grid” and “mask.poly” entries have changed from strings to arrays of strings to support the processing of multiple masking regions.

    • The new “output_flag” entry is a dictionary specifying the desired output types.

Output format changes - NONE

MET version 13.0.0 adds or modifies the following output file formats:

  • Grid-Diag output format

    • The new “mask” dimension, “mask_name” variable, and “mask_size” variable are added to support the processing of mulitple masking regions.

    • Existing histogram variables are modified to include the “mask” dimension.

    • New information theory variables are added for “entropy”, “joint_entropy”, and “mutual_information”.

Output data changes - NONE

MET version 13.0.0 modifies existing output data values in the following ways:

  • None

Additional upgrade instructions - NONE

Recommendations when upgrading to MET version 13.0.0:

  • None