Release Date: July 30, 2025
The DTC is pleased to announce the coordinated release of the enhanced Model Evaluation Tools (METplus), a comprehensive, multi-component verification framework! METplus features a suite of Python wrappers and ancillary scripts designed to streamline the setup and execution of MET. Additionally, METplus includes an analysis suite with user-friendly interfaces, METviewer and METexpress, supported by shared packages such as METdataio, METcalcpy, and METplotpy that facilitate loading, storing, aggregating, and plotting MET output for analysis. This coordinated release, under development since December 2024 includes:
- METplus version 6.1.0 – Release Notes
- MET version 12.1.0 – Release Notes
METplus Analysis Suite, comprised of:
- METviewer version 6.1.0 – Release Notes
- METexpress version 6.1.0 – Release Notes
- METdataio 3.1.0 – Release Notes
- METcalcpy 3.1.0 – Release Notes
- METplotpy 3.1.0 – Release Notes
Please visit the DTC website to find additional links to code, online tutorials, video training, documentation, and GitHub discussion support for all components of METplus.
Key Enhancements and New Features
MET/METplus/METplus Analysis Tools Updates:
- Added the capability for MET and METplus Wrappers to be installed via Conda!
- Updated Python from 3.10.x to 3.12.0
- New or enhanced MET capabilities:
- Created a new Pair-Stat tool to compute statistics for already paired forecast and observation data
- Enhanced Pair-Stat tool to 1) support IODA and Python inputs and 2) support temporal filtering
- Enhancements to fully support writing range/azimuth data to MetCDF output files
- Enhancements to MET statistical tools to read and process range/azimuth data from the TC-RMW and RMW-Analysis tools
- Various enhancements to use OpenMP parallelization in the library and application code
- New METplus Wrappers:
- Pair-Stat
- RMW-Analysis
- New use cases:
- International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) data ingest and verification
- Verifying UFS GFS Prototype Convective Triggering Potential (CTP) and Humidity Index (HI) for Land-Atmosphere coupling
- Native WRF ingest and verification for Hurricane Matthew
- Application of separate climatologies for forecast and observations in Grid-Stat
- Verifying GFS cloud forecasts against GFS cloud analyses in Grid-Stat
- Verifying GFS cloud forecasts against GOES-16 cloud products in Grid-Stat
- Verifying GFS cloud forecasts against ASOS ceilometer in Point-Stat
- Read and process GeoTIFF format using Python embedding
- METplus Analysis Suite capabilities:
- Added CTP and HI functions as new diagnostics in METcalcpy
- Enhanced scatter plot functionality in METplotpy
- Various bug fixes
- Updated documentation: The table of contents has been updated to include all METplus components, helping streamline navigation and searching across components
- Improved cybersecurity support: Significant improvements have been made within the METplus code base and test environment to address Common Vulnerabilities, and Exposures (CVEs) as well as SonarQube and STIG findings
- NOTE! Please pay close attention to changes in configuration file updates and output line type modifications to ensure compatibility with your workflows; users are encouraged to review the MET Version 12.1.0 Upgrade Instructions for more detailed information
Support for US-based HPCs
Over the next several weeks, METplus 6.1.0 and all components will be installed on several US-based HPC (e.g., NSF NCAR Casper, NOAA Ursa, and NOAA WCOSS2) to make it more accessible to both the research and operational communities. Please see the list of existing builds for more information. NOTE: METviewer and METexpress are intended to be installed on your local server.
Citations
You may use our Zenodo DOIs when citing the entire METplus system, or MET (if that is the only system used):
METplus: https://zenodo.org/records/16641510
