Model Evaluation Tools METv4.1 (May 22, 2013)

================================================================================
Model Evaluation Tools (MET) TERMS OF USE - IMPORTANT!
================================================================================

USE OF THIS SOFTWARE IS SUBJECT TO THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS:

1. License.  Subject to these terms and conditions, University Corporation for
   Atmospheric Research (UCAR) grants you a non-exclusive, royalty-free license
   to use, create derivative works, publish, distribute, disseminate, transfer,
   modify, revise and copy the Model Evaluation Tools (MET) software, in both
   object and source code (the Software).

   You shall not sell, license or transfer for a fee the Software, or any work
   that in any manner contains the Software.

2. Disclaimer of Warranty on Software.  Use of the Software is at your sole
   risk.  The Software is provided "AS IS" and without warranty of any kind and
   UCAR EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES AND/OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND,
   EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY WARRANTIES OR
   CONDITIONS OF TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT OF A THIRD PARTY'S INTELLECTUAL
   PROPERTY, MERCHANTABILITY OR SATISFACTORY QUALITY AND FITNESS FOR A
   PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  THE PARTIES EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM THAT THE UNIFORM COMPUTER
   INFORMATION TRANSACTIONS ACT (UCITA) APPLIES TO OR GOVERNS THIS AGREEMENT.
   No oral or written information or advice given by UCAR or a UCAR authorized
   representative shall create a warranty or in any way increase the scope of
   this warranty.  Should the Software prove defective, you (and neither UCAR
   nor any UCAR representative) assume the cost of all necessary correction.

3. Limitation of Liability.  UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE, SHALL
   UCAR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL
   DAMAGES INCLUDING LOST REVENUE, PROFIT OR DATA, WHETHER IN AN ACTION IN
   CONTRACT OR TORT ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE
   THE SOFTWARE, EVEN IF UCAR HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
   DAMAGES.

4. Compliance with Law.  All Software and any technical data delivered under
   this Agreement are subject to U.S. export control laws and may be subject to
   export or import regulations in other countries.  You agree to comply
   strictly with all applicable laws and regulations in connection with use and
   distribution of the Software, including export control laws, and you
   acknowledge that you have responsibility to obtain any required license to
   export, re-export, or import as may be required.

5. No Endorsement/No Support.  The names UCAR/NCAR, National Center for
   Atmospheric Research and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
   may not be used in any advertising or publicity to endorse or promote any
   products or commercial entity unless specific written permission is obtained
   from UCAR.  The Software is provided without any support or maintenance, and
   without any obligation to provide you with modifications, improvements,
   enhancements, or updates of the Software.

6. Controlling Law and Severability.  This Agreement shall be governed by the
   laws of the United States and the State of Colorado.  If for any reason a
   court of competent jurisdiction finds any provision, or portion thereof, to
   be unenforceable, the remainder of this Agreement shall continue in full
   force and effect.  This Agreement shall not be governed by the United Nations
   Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, the application
   of which is hereby expressly excluded.

7. Termination.  Your rights under this Agreement will terminate automatically
   without notice from UCAR if you fail to comply with any term(s) of this
   Agreement.  You may terminate this Agreement at any time by destroying the
   Software and any related documentation and any complete or partial copies
   thereof.  Upon termination, all rights granted under this Agreement shall
   terminate.  The following provisions shall survive termination: Sections 2, 3,
   6 and 9.

8. Complete Agreement.  This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between
   the parties with respect to the use of the Software and supersedes all prior
   or contemporaneous understandings regarding such subject matter.  No
   amendment to or modification of this Agreement will be binding unless in
   writing and signed by UCAR.

9. Notices and Additional Terms.  Copyright in Software is held by UCAR. You
   must include, with each copy of the Software and associated documentation,
   a copy of this Agreement and the following notice:

   "The source of this material is the Research Applications Laboratory at the
   National Center for Atmospheric Research, a program of the University
   Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) pursuant to a Cooperative
   Agreement with the National Science Foundation; Copyright 2007 University
   Corporation for Atmospheric Research.  All Rights Reserved."

   The following notice shall be displayed on any scholarly works associated
   with, related to or derived from the Software:

   "Model Evaluation Tools (MET) was developed at the National Center for
   Atmospheric Research (NCAR) through a grant from the United States Air Force
   Weather Agency (AFWA).  NCAR is sponsored by the United States National
   Science Foundation."

By using or downloading the Software, you agree to be bound by the terms and
conditions of this Agreement.

================================================================================
This is the main directory for the Model Evaluation Tools source code release.
================================================================================

For questions, please:
- Refer to the MET User's Guide in the /doc sub-directory.
- Refer to the MET website: http://www.dtcenter.org/met/users
- Send mail to met_help@ucar.edu.

Dependencies
------------

- MET requires the following to be installed on your system prior to building:
   - NCEP's BUFRLIB Library
      - http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/sib/decoders/BUFRLIB
   - UniData's NetCDF Library
      - http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf
   - GNU Scientific Library (GSL), developer's version
      - http://www.gnu.org/software/gsl
   - NCEP's GRIB2 Library in C (g2clib), if wishing to compile GRIB2 support
      - http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/codes/GRIB2
   - The F2C (or G2C) library for interfacing between fortran and C code
      - Not needed for most compilers.
      - http://www.netlib.org/f2c
   - HDF4 and HDF-EOS2 libraries, if wishing to compile MODIS-Regrid.
      - http://www.hdfgroup.org/products/hdf4
      - http://www.hdfgroup.org/hdfeos.html

- It is suggested that the following tools be used in conjunction with MET:
   - Unified Post-Processor
      - http://www.dtcenter.org/wrf-nmm/users
   - The "copygb" utility distributed with the Unified Post-Processor

NOTE: The required libraries should be compiled with the same set of compilers
      to be used in compiling MET.

How to compile and run?
-----------------------

For more detailed instructions on building MET and for a list of supported
platforms and compilers, please refer to the MET User's Guide in the doc/
sub-directory, or the MET Online Tutorial:
  http://www.dtcenter.org/met/users/support/online_tutorial

- In the top level directory, sample configuration files named user_defs.mk
  are provided for compiling with GNU, PGI, Intel, or IBM compilers.
  Make a copy of appropriate configuration file.  For example:
   - cp user_defs_gnu.mk user_defs.mk

- Next, configure the user_defs.mk file as follows:
   - Set "MAKE" to the full path for the GNU Make utility.
   - Set "ARCH_FLAGS" architecture flags as needed.

   - Set "CXX" to the full path for your C++ compiler
     (recommend GNU g++, PGI pgCC, Intel icc, or IBM xlC).
   - Set "CXX_FLAGS" to the C++ compiler flags to be used.
   - Set "CXX_LIBS" to link to any additional libraries required for the C++
     compiler.

   - Set "FC" to the full path for your Fortran compiler
     (recommend GNU g77/gfortran, PGI pgf77, Intel ifort, or IBM xlf).
   - Set "FC_FLAGS" to the Fortran compiler flags to be used.
   - Set "FC_LIBS" to link to any additional libraries required for the Fortran
     compiler.

   - Set "NETCDF_BASE", "NETCDF_INCS", and "NETCDF_LIBS" to point to the
     location of the NetCDF library.

   - Set "BUFR_BASE", "BUFR_INCS", and "BUFR_LIBS" to point to the location
     of the BUFRLIB library.

   - Set "GSL_BASE", "GSL_INCS", and "GSL_LIBS" to point to the location of the
     GSL library.

   - Set "F2C_BASE", "F2C_INCS", "F2C_LIBS", and "F2C_LIBNAME" to point to the
     location of the F2C library.  Or leave empty for compilers which do not
     require it, such as GNU gfortran and PGI pgf77.

   - If compiling support for GRIB2, set "WITH_GRIB2" to 1 and set
     "GRIB2C_BASE", "GRIB2C_INCS", and "GRIB2C_LIBS" to point to the location
     of the GRIB2C library.

   - If compiling MODIS-Regrid, set "HDF_BASE_DIR" and "HDF_EOS_BASE_DIR" to the
     top-level library directories containing include and lib subdirectories.

   - Edit the "ENABLE_TOOL_NAME" settings if you would like to disable the
     compilation of any of the MET tools.

   - Save and close the user_defs.mk file.

- Type 'make >& make_met.log &'

- Type 'tail -f make_met.log' to view the execution of the make.

- When make is finished, type 'CNTRL-C' to quit the tail.

- If all tools are enabled and the build is successful, the "bin" directory will
  contain 21 executables:
   - ascii2nc
   - ensemble_stat
   - gen_poly_mask
   - grid_stat
   - madis2nc
   - mode
   - mode_analysis
   - modis_regrid
   - pb2nc
   - pcp_combine
   - plot_data_plane
   - plot_point_obs
   - point_stat
   - series_analysis
   - stat_analysis
   - tc_dland
   - tc_pairs
   - tc_stat
   - wavelet_stat
   - wwmca_plot
   - wwmca_regrid

- Type 'ls bin' to check for the presence of the executables.

- Type 'cd scripts' to enter the scripts directory

- Type './test_all.sh >& test_all.log &' to run all of the test scripts in the
  directory.  These test scripts use test data supplied with the tarball.  For
  instructions on running your own data, please refer to the MET User's Guide.

- Type 'tail -f test_all.log' to view the execution of the test script.

- When the test script is finished, type 'CNTRL-C' to quit the tail.

- Look in ../out to find the output files for these tests.

- In particular, check that the PB2NC tool ran without error.  If there was an
  error, try adding or removing "-DBLOCK4" from the ARCH_FLAGS line in the
  top-level Makefile.  Then rebuild MET, being sure to run "make clean" first.

================================================================================
Release Notes
================================================================================

Version 4.1 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- What's New:
    - METv4.1 includes several new tools and enhancements:
      - New Tools: MODIS-Regrid, Series-Analysis, and MET-Tropical Cyclone
      - Major Enhancments: Spread-Skill Variance (SSVAR) for Ensemble-Stat

- New Tools:
    - The new MODIS-Regrid tool reformats gridded MODIS data for use by other
      MET tools.  Building MODIS-Regrid requires the HDF and HDF-EOS libraries.
    - The new Series-Analysis tool performs a grid-to-grid comparison over a
      series of fields, most commonly a time-series.  A user-specified set of
      statistics are computed over that series for each grid point and are
      written to a gridded NetCDF output file.  This tool may be used to analyze
      how model performance varies spatially.
    - The new set of MET-Tropical Cyclone (MET-TC) tools performs verification
      on ATCF (Automated Tropical Cyclone Forecasting) files.  The tools compare
      forecast ATCF files to the National Hurricane Center's (NHC) BEST track
      data.  MET-TC implements and extends the verification logic used by the
      NHC. See the MET-TC user's guide in the doc sub-directory for more detail.
      MET-TC consists of 3 tools:
      - TC-DLand precomputes distances to land and writes a gridded NetCDF file.
      - TC-Pairs matches the forecast and observation tracks and writes a
        Tropical Cyclone Statistics (.tcst) file.
      - TC-Stat reads .tcst files and computes summary statistics.
      - R-script (scripts/Rscripts/plot_tcmpr.R) for filtering and plotting
        the .tcst files.

- Enhancements to Existing Tools:
    - Distributed latest set of bug fixes for METv4.0.
    - Fixed two major bugs in MODE:
      - The object areas being reported were artificially inflated.
        See explanation:
          http://www.dtcenter.org/met/users/docs/write_ups/mode_areas.pdf
      - Areas of bad data were being treated as zero's in the convolution step.
    - Restructured the MODE code to make it more extensible.
    - Enhanced Point-Stat and Ensemble-Stat rejection reason counts to include
      the duplicate flag logic.
    - Enhanced ASCII2NC by adding support for the little_R point observation
      format.
    - Enhanced ASCII2NC by adding support for the SURFRAD point observation
      format, including time-averaging logic.
    - Enhanced MADIS2NC to support PROFILER and MARITIME data file types.
    - Enhanced Plot-Point-Obs by adding the -dot_size option.
    - Enhanced PB2NC, MADIS2NC, and ASCII2NC to pass through the point
      observation quality control flags and enhanced Point-Stat and
      Ensemble-Stat to filter the observations by those quality control values.
    - Enhanced Point-Stat and Ensemble-Stat by modifying the logic for the
      "mask_sid" entry in the configuration file.  It now contains a list of
      station ID's to be treated as a group.
    - Enhanced the duplicate flag logic in Point-Stat and Ensemble-Stat when
      verifying vertical level fields (e.g. 2-m temperature) against surface
      message type (e.g. ADPSFC or SFCSHP).  Set the observation level value to
      bad data so that different level values will not be treated as unique
      observations.
    - Enhanced Ensemble-Stat by adding the new SSVAR (spread-skill variance)
      output line type for creating ensemble spread-skill plots.
    - Enhanced STAT-Analysis to aggregate multiple SSVAR lines.
    - Enhanced STAT-Analysis by adding the "-by case" option for running jobs
      once for each unique case entry.
    - Factored map plotting information into data/config/ConfigMapData.  Users
      may specify which maps should be used when the MET tools create plots.

Version 4.0 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- What's New:
    - Users will notice two major upgrades for METv4.0:
      support for GRIB2 and a restructuring of the MET configuration files.
    
- Major Upgrades:
    - Added optional support for GRIB2.  This support depends on the external
      NCEP GRIB2 C-library.  Support for GRIB2 is enabled by setting the
      "WITH_GRIB2" flag in "user_defs.mk".
    - Restructured the MET configuration files to make them more readable and
      give the user finer control over the verification tasks to be performed.
      See "data/config/README" for more detail on the changes.

- Enhancements to Existing Tools:
    - Distributed latest set of bug fixes for METv3.1.
    - Enhanced Point-Stat and Ensemble-Stat to apply filtering logic when
      encountering duplicate point observations at the same location.  See the
      "duplicate_flag" section in "data/config/README" for more detail.
    - Enhanced PCP-Combine to run on all supported gridded data file types,
      rather than just GRIB1.  Added -config command line option to specify the
      field to be processed.
    - Enhanced STAT-Analysis and MODE-Analysis by adding support for the
      -fcst_valid_hour and -obs_valid_hour filtering options.
    - Enhanced STAT-Analysis to aggregate multiple NBRCNT lines together for the
      "aggregate" job type.
    - Enhanced handling of GRIB1 and GRIB2 table information by reading it from
      data files at runtime rather than having it hard-coded in header files.
    - For Point-Stat, Grid-Stat, Wavelet-Stat, Ensemble-Stat, and MODE, moved
      support for the -fcst_valid, -fcst_lead, -obs_valid, and -obs_lead
      filtering options from the command line to the configuration files.
    - Updated the WWMCA tools to ensure that pixel age masking is optional.
    - Fixed STAT-Analysis bug in the computation of the GO Index.
    - Fixed Ensemble-Stat bug in the handling of missing data.
    - Fixed library code bug when applying polyline masks to global datasets.

- Enhancement to the Build Process:
    - Defined unit tests for each of the MET tools and major library
      functionality.  These tests are not distributed with the code but are
      routinely run during development to ensure that new development does not
      break existing functionality.

Version 3.1 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- What's New:
    - The majority of the changes for METv3.1 are internal restructuring and
      streamlining of how MET reads gridded data, which should be transparent
      to the user. However, there have been several enhancements the typical
      user may notice. Please refer to the MET User's Guide for more detail on
      these additions.

- Major Upgrades:
    - Implemented a new data class hierarchy for reading gridded data files to
      enable future support of additional data formats, such as GRIB2.
    - Incorporated a new logger class throughout MET causing all messages
      printed to the screen to be prefixed with a message type of ERROR,
      WARNING, or DEBUG(N), where N indicates the debug level (default is 2):
        0: Suppress all messages except WARNING and ERROR.
        1: List input and output files.
        2: List summary processing information.
        3: List detailed processing information.
        4+: List detailed debugging information.
    - Added a -log command line option to all the MET tools to optionally
      write their output to a log file.
    - Changed how MET is storing gridded data from using an integer scale and
      offset to a double. The integer scale and offset approach used in prior
      versions of MET caused individual gridded data values to be stored using
      only five significant digits.
        - Comparing previous versions to METv3.1, users should notice only
          slight differences in the continuous statistics MET produces (CNT
          and SL1L2 line types).
        - However, users may notice more significant differences in statistics
          that are based on defining a threshold. Due to these precision issues,
          the contingency tables counts and statistics (CTC and CTS line types)
          MET produces may change significantly in METv3.1.
        - METv3.1 has enhanced precision over earlier versions and more
          accurately represents the input data and resulting statistical
          measures.

- New Tools:
    - Added new madis2nc tool to reformat MADIS NetCDF point observation files
      into a NetCDF format that MET can read. Currently supports METAR and RAOB
      types of MADIS files with additional MADIS data types to be added in
      future releases.
    - Added new plot_data_plane utility to read any supported gridded data file,
      select a field from that file, and render it as a PostScript image.

- Enhancements to Existing Tools:
    - Distributed latest set of bug fixes for METv3.0.1.
    - Changed the default output directory for the MET statistics tools from
      MET_BASE/out/tool_name to the current directory.
    - Enhanced plot_point_obs by adding a -data_file command line argument to
      specify the grid on which the points should be plotted. Included detailed
      DEBUG(4) information about the points being plotted.
    - Enhanced stat_analysis to enable job command arguments on the command line
      to be used in conjunction with a configuration file. Included detailed
      DEBUG(4) information when deriving wind directions.
    - Enhanced wwmca_regrid and wwmca_plot to specify the pixel age when
      processing the data.
    - Enhanced mode to perform the convolution step more quickly.
    - When using MET statistics tools (like grid_stat, point_stat, wavelet_stat,
      ensemble_stat, and mode) to verify the NetCDF output of other MET tools
      (like pcp_combine and ensemble_stat), added logic to look for the name
      and level NetCDF variable attributes. If present, write those values out
      into the FCST_VAR, OBS_VAR, FCST_LEV or OBS_LEV statistical output
      columns.
    - In the mode_analysis -summary job, modified the computation of the
      standard deviations by dividing by N-1 rather than N which will have a
      slight impact on the output.

- Enhancement to the Build Process:
    - Modified the configuration and build process for MET by grouping the
      parameters that the user needs to edit into a file named user_defs.mk in
      the top-level MET directory.
    - Reorganized the MET directory structure to use src, include, and lib
      sub-directories for the source code, headers, and compiled libraries,
      respectively.

Version 3.0 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- What's New:
    - Initial release of the Ensemble-Stat tool. This tool will read an
      arbitrary number of deterministic forecast files and derive ensemble
      forecasts and statistics. Ensemble mean, spread, and probability are among
      the many fields that can be derived by this tool. Additionally, if
      corresponding observations are included, this tool will produce rank
      histograms, probability integral transform (PIT) values, and the
      continuous ranked probability score (CRPS).
    - Addition of a tools sub-directory for ancillary tools that may not be of
      general interest. These tools are not compiled unless the compilation flag
      is enabled in the top-level Makefile.
    - In the tools sub-directory, initial release of the wwmca_regrid and
      wwmca_plot tools for regridding and plotting the World Wide Merged Cloud
      Analysis (WWMCA) product from the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA).
    - In the tools sub-directory, initial release of plot_point_obs tool for
      plotting the locations of point observations in the MET NetCDF point
      observation file format.
    - Enhance MET to support the NetCDF output of the WRF-ARW pinterp tool. When
      reading gridded NetCDF data into the MET tools, users will now have to
      explicitly specify in the configuration file the names and dimensions of
      the NetCDF variables to be read.

- Library Code:
    - Enhance to read the gridded NetCDF output of the WRF-ARW pinterp tool.
    - Enhance to read the gridded NetCDF output of the MET Ensemble-Stat tool.
    - Enhance the NetCDF output of the MET tools to include global attributes
      for the MET version and MET tool used to create it.
    - Enhance the gridded NetCDF output of the MET tools to include variables
      specifying the latitude and longitude of each grid point so the data can
      be displayed using the Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) tool from UCAR-Unidata.
    - Enhance the gridded NetCDF output of the MET tools to include a standard
      set of variable attributes containing timing information.
    - Enhance the parsing of the gridded NetCDF data files to be backwards
      compatible with METv2.0 so that METv3.0 can read the NetCDF output of the
      PCP-Combine tool from METv2.0.

- ASCII2NC and PB2NC Tools:
    - Enhance how accumulation intervals are stored in the NetCDF point
      observation files. Store them as seconds rather than hours to allow for
      sub-hourly accumulation intervals.

- PB2NC Tool:
    - Modify FORTRAN code to remove compiler warnings.
    - Modify logic of the "-dump" command line option to only do an ASCII dump
      for those message types actually requested in the configuration file.

- Gen-Poly-Mask Tool:
    - No changes.

- PCP-Combine Tool:
    - Enhance the error checking of command line arguments.
    - Enhance logic for the "-add" command to allow for an arbitrary number
      (1 or more) of input files to be added together.
    - Enhance to allow for multiple entries for the "-pcp_dir" command line
      argument to specify multiple search directories.
    - Enhance to allow for off-hour accumulation intervals by specifying them in
      HH[MMSS] format. Output NetCDF variables are named in APCP_HH or
      APCP_HHMMSS format.
    - Enhance to allow for off-hour data by specifying timestrings in
      YYYYMMDD[_HH[MMSS]] format.
    - Modify how the "level" NetCDF variable attribute is written to be
      consistent with how the level information is written by the other MET
      tools.

- Point-Stat, Grid-Stat, Wavelet-Stat, and MODE Tools:
    - Add "-fcst_lead", "-fcst_valid", "-obs_lead", and "-obs_valid" command
      line options to explicitly specify which GRIB records to use. These are
      necessary when reading a GRIB file containing multiple output times.
    - Delete trailing spaces from the ASCII output files generated by these
      STAT tools, thus greatly reducing the file size of the output STAT files.
    - Enhance to write out error messages using human-readable time strings
      rather than unixtime.
    - Enhance to more closely check the equality of the input forecast and
      observation grids. Ensure that they are identical, rather than just having
      the same dimensions.

- Point-Stat and Grid-Stat Tools:
    - Enhance to parse NCEP's probability information from the GRIB Product
      Description Section, specifically for the Short-Range Ensemble Forecast
      (SREF) data.
    - In the probabilistic contingency table statistics (PSTD) line type, add
      the base rate as an output column (BASER).
    - In PSTD line type, move the "N_THRESH" output column after "TOTAL" to be
      consistent with the other probabilistic line types.
    - For the output probabilistic lines (PCT, PSTD, PJC, and PRC) in the
      "FCST_THRESH" output column, replace NA with a list of the actual
      probability thresholds used.
    - Add support for the multi-category contingency table counts and
      statistics, MCTC and MCTS output lines, respectively. Multi-category
      contingency tables are computed whenever the output flags for them is
      turned on and the user has specified multiple thresholds to be used.
    - Enhance to only require that users specify thresholds in the configuration
      file when they have selected output line types that actually require them.

- Point-Stat Tool:
    - Enhance to allow for the verification of ranges of vertical levels
      (e.g. TMP/Z30-60), rather than just ranges of pressure levels.
    - If one of the point observation files passed to Point-Stat doesn't exist,
      print a warning message rather than erroring out.
    - Rename command line option from "-ncfile" to "-point_obs" to be consistent
      with the Ensemble-Stat options.
    - Rename command line options from "-valid_beg" and "-valid_end" to
      "-obs_valid_beg" and "-obs_valid_end". Note that previous options do
      still work.
    - Add the station name as an output column (OBS_SID) in the matched pair
      (MPR) output line type.
    - Explicitly state the observation valid time in the "OBS_VALID_BEG" and
      "OBS_VALID_END" columns in the matched pair (MPR) output line type.
    - Add detailed logging information when verbosity is set to 3 or higher.
      For each verification task, dump out counts of reason codes listing why
      observations were not used.
    - Enhance the error checking to error out when the user has specified a
      gridded NetCDF forecast file but has not specified the verifying GRIB
      observations (obs_field) to be used in the configuration file.

- Grid-Stat Tool:
    - Add the "-interp_flag" configuration option to specify which fields
      should be smoothed.
    - Enhance the algorithm for computing fractional coverage for neighborhood
      verification methods, making the code run substantially faster for large
      neighborhood sizes.

- Wavelet-Stat Tool:
    - Enhance to allow the forecast and observation fields to be specified
      separately in the configuration file.

- Stat-Analysis Tool:
    - Add the "-column_eq" job command option for filtering STAT data.
    - Add the "-column_str" job command option to do string comparisons when
      filtering STAT data. This was added to filter on the station names listed
      in the "OBS_SID" column. Users may specify multiple values by providing a
      comma-separated list.
    - Enhance to parse and aggregate the RHIST and ORANK output lines from the
      Ensemble-Stat tool.
    - Enhance to parse and aggregate the MCTC and MCTS output lines from the
      Point-Stat and Grid-Stat tools.
    - Add "-tmp_dir" command line argument and fix bug in how the temporary
      directory is set.
    - Add the "-vif_flag" job command option to enable the computation of the
      variance inflation factor. Enabling the VIF causes the normal confidence
      intervals in the output statistics to be adjusted to account for lag 1
      autocorrelation when accumulating statistics through time.
    - Fix bug to enable Stat-Analysis to accumulate matched pair lines (MPR)
      and compute the MCTC or MCTS output line types.
    - Fix bug so that Stat-Analysis can parse strings like "PROB(TMP<273)" in
      the "FCST_VAR" and "OBS_VAR" columns when reading MPR lines.

- MODE Tool:
    - Shortened the output file naming convention by removing the fcst/obs
      variable/level information. Suggest using the "output_prefix"
      configuration option to customize output file names.

- MODE-Analysis Tool:
    - No changes.

Version 2.0 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- Build process
   - Add sample Makefile for building MET with Intel compilers.

- Library code
   - Restructure and rename output ASCII file format from VSDB to STAT and add
     output columns to store data in a more straight-forward way.
   - Enable more sophisticated masking for the Point-Stat, Grid-Stat, and MODE
     tools by reading the output of the Gen-Poly-Mask tool or any other gridded
     data field and, optionally, thresholding that field to define a masking
     region.

- ASCII2NC
   - Fix bug so that observations values from the same observing location are
     assigned the same header id.

- PB2NC
   - Remove requirement that PrepBufr files be Fortran-blocked prior to running
     through PB2NC.  The blocking is now done internally as specified in the
     ARCH_FLAGS in the top-level MET Makefile.  The "-DBLOCK4" flag indicates
     that 4-byte blocking should be performed instead of the default 8-byte
     blocking.  This is compiler-dependent.  The sample Makefiles contain a
     best guess for each compiler, but if you experience runtime errors from the
     PB2NC tool try adding or removing the "-DBLOCK4" flag, recompiling, and
     rerunning.
   - Running the PB2NC tool, which links to the BUFRLIB library, on 64-bit
     machines continues to be problematic.  Users may continue to build MET and
     the libraries on which it depends as 32-bit on 64-bit machines.  MET users
     will be notified when the BUFRLIB 64-bit issues are resolved.

- Gen-Poly-Mask
   - New for this release.

- PCP-Combine
   - Add the "-ptv" command line argument to specify which GRIB parameter table
     version number should be used.

- Grid-Stat
   - Modify how the user specifies the forecast and observation fields to be
     selected, thresholded, and compared.  The user can now select them
     independently and compare two different fields.
   - Add the option of specifying a level for a GRIB record as 'L', meaning any
     generic level type, as opposed to specifying a pressure level or vertical
     level.
   - Add support for verifying probabilistic forecasts and add new output line
     types to store the output.  Probabilistic data may have a range of values
     of [0, 1] or [0, 100].  However, probabilistic data with a range of
     [0, 100] will first be rescaled to [0, 1] before verifying it.
   - Add configurable wind speed threshold parameters to specify which (U, V)
     points should be included in the VL1L2 partial sums.
   - Change the "ncep_defaults" configurable parameter to "grib_ptv" to specify
     which GRIB parameter table version number should be used.
   - Add an "output_prefix" configurable parameter to include a user-specified
     string in the output file names.

- Point-Stat
   - Same as Grid-Stat, see above.

- Wavelet-Stat
   - New for this release.

- STAT-Analysis
   - Rename the VSDB-Analysis tool to the STAT-Analysis tool and modify it to
     read the STAT output lines from the other MET tools.
   - Simplify names for jobs.
   - Add support for converting VL1L2 STAT lines into information about wind
     direction errors.
   - Add support for reading and aggregating the ISC STAT line from the
     Wavelet-Stat tool.
   - Add support for reading and aggregating the new probability STAT line
     types (PCT, PSTD, PJC, and PRC) from the Grid-Stat and Point-Stat tools.

- MODE
   - Change the "ncep_defaults" configurable parameter to "grib_ptv" to specify
     which GRIB parameter table version number should be used.
   - Add an "output_prefix" configurable parameter to include a user-specified
     string in the output file names.
   - Modify the output PostScript file to include new summary measures on the
     first page and add a page listing out the pairwise attributes of the
     matched cluster (formerly called "composite") objects.
   - Add a column to the MODE output files for the VERSION number of MODE that
     generated the file.
   - Add a column to the MODE output files for the AREA_THRESH value.

- MODE-Analysis
   - Modify to read the latest MODE output columns.

Version 1.1 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- Build process
   - Add support for building MET on an IBM and provide a sample IBM Makefile.
   - Add support for use of the GNU gfortran compiler.
   - Supply compiler flags for building MET as a 32-bit executable on 64-bit
     machines.
   - Reorganize Makefile configuration process.
   - Remove several compilation warning messages.

- Library code
   - Several bug fixes.
   - Allow the use of environment variables in the configuration files.
   - Improve the algorithm for computing percentiles to include interpolating
     between values when necessary.

- PB2NC
   - Add "-pbfile" command line option to process multiple PREPBUFR files.
   - Add the "-valid_beg" and "-valid_end" command line options to explicitly
     set the retention time window.
   - Simplify format of the output NetCDF file by removing variables that are
     not used by Point-Stat.

- ASCII2NC
   - Add new tool for converting ASCII observations to NetCDF for input into
     Point-Stat.

- PCP-Combine
   - Add "-add" command line option to add together accumulation intervals
     from two Grib files directly.
   - Add "-subtract" command line option to take the difference of accumulation
     intervals from two Grib files directly.
   - Add "-gc" command line option to allow the user to specify which grib
     code to use.

- Point-Stat
   - Add "-ncfile" command line option to process multiple NetCDF point
     observation files.
   - Add the ability to dump out the matched pair data (forecast, observation,
     climatology) directly to ASCII and VSDB files.
   - Add output matched pair (MPR) line type to store matched pair data.
   - Compute bootstrap confidence intervals for the Contingency Table Statistics
     (CTS) and Continuous Statistics (CNT) line types.
   - Add 5 parameters to the configuration file for options related to computing
     bootstrap confidence intervals.
   - Add "rank_corr_flag" configuration parameter to disable the computation of
     Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient and Kendall's Tau Correlation
     Coefficient to improve runtime performance.
   - Add "tmp_dir" configuration parameter to specify the directory where
     temporary files should be written by Point-Stat.
   - Allow the "mask_grids" configuration parameter to be set to "FULL" to
     indicate that statistics should be computed over the entire domain.

- Grid-Stat
   - Add the ability to perform neighborhood verification.
   - Add 3 parameters to the configuration file for options related to
     neighborhood verification.
   - Add 3 output line types related to neighborhood verification:
     Neighborhood Contingency Table Counts (NBRCTC)
     Neighborhood Contingency Table Statistics (NBRCTS)
     Neighborhood Continuous Statistics (NBRCNT)
   - Compute bootstrap confidence intervals for the Contingency Table Statistics
     (CTS and NBRCTS) and Continuous Statistics (CNT and NBRCNT) line types.
   - Add 5 parameters to the configuration file for options related to computing
     bootstrap confidence intervals.
   - Add "rank_corr_flag" configuration parameter to disable the computation of
     Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient and Kendall's Tau Correlation
     Coefficient to improve runtime performance.
   - Add "tmp_dir" configuration parameter to specify the directory where
     temporary files should be written by Point-Stat.
   - Allow the "mask_grids" configuration parameter to be set to "FULL" to
     indicate that statistics should be computed over the entire domain.

- MODE
   - Add "met_data_dir" configuration parameter to point to the location of
     static data files MODE needs for plotting.  It should be set if MODE is
     moved from its original installation directory.
   - Enhance the way colorbars are plotted in the PostScript output and add a
     "stride_length" configuration parameter to indicate how often labels should
     be plotted alongside the colorbar.

- VSDB-Analysis
   - Add job type "vsdb_job_aggr_mpr" to process the matched pair output data
     from Point-Stat.
   - Add 6 parameters to the configuration file for options related to computing
     bootstrap confidence intervals.
   - Add "init_hour" configuration parameter to filter out data by the model
     initialization hour.
   - Add "rank_corr_flag" configuration parameter to disable the computation of
     Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient and Kendall's Tau Correlation
     Coefficient to improve runtime performance.

- MODE-Analysis
   - Add "version" configuration parameter to store the version number.

Version 1.0 Release Notes:
-------------------------
- Library code
  - Modified the configuration file parser code.  The formats of all of the
    configuration files in MET have changed since the Beta release.  The
    version of the configuration files in the data/config or scripts/config
    directories  must be used with METv1.0. 

- PB2NC
  - Support message type strings "ANYAIR", "ANYSFC", and "ONLYSF".  See the
    default configuration file for details.
  - Change "multiple_quality_marks_flag" to "event_stack_flag" in the
    configuration file.  See section 3.5.2 for more information.
  - Retrieve the data level category value from the bottom of the event stack
    which is the only place it is defined.
  - Derive additional observation variables, such as dewpoint temperature, wind
    speed, relative humidity, mixing ratio, and pressure-reduced to mean sea
    level.
  - Correct units for specific humidity.

- PCP-Combine
  - Change the format of the input date/time.

- Point-Stat
  - Support message type strings "ANYAIR", "ANYSFC", and "ONLYSF".  See the
    default configuration file for details.
  - Add "mask_stations" to the configuration file to perform verification at
    individual stations.
  - Derive wind speed in the forecast field from the U and V components of wind.
  - Compute additional continuous statistics, such as Spearman rank correlation
    coefficient, Kendall's Tau statistic.
  - Add the least-squares interpolation method.
  - Add confidence intervals for several categorical statistics.
  - Climatology files now correctly being accepted.
  - Fix a problem with rotating winds from grid-relative coordinates to
    earth-relative coordinates.
  - Make changes to the output file format (refer to Chapter 4 of the MET User's
    Guide).
  - Make changes to the output file names (by valid time, not init time).

- Grid-Stat
  - Enhance the NetCDF output file.  In addition to the forecast-observation
    difference, the raw forecast and observation fields are included.
  - Add "interp_method" and "interp_width" to the configuration file to
    optionally smooth the forecast field prior to performing verification.
  - Compute additional continuous statistics, such as Spearman rank correlation
    coefficient, Kendall's Tau statistic.
  - Add confidence intervals for several categorical statistics.
  - Fix a problem with rotating winds from grid-relative coordinates to
    earth-relative coordinates.
  - Make changes to output file format (refer to Chapter 5 of the MET User's
    Guide).
  - Make changes to the output file names (by valid time, not init time).

- MODE
  - Change "vx_grib_code" to "fcst_grib_code" and "obs_grib_code" in the
    configuration file to derive and compare objects from different raw fields.
  - Change "raw_color_table" to "fcst_raw_color_table" and "obs_raw_color_table"
    in the configuration file to plot the raw fields using different
    colortables.
  - Add "fcst/obs_raw_plot_min" and "fcst/obs_raw_plot_max" to the configuration
    file to rescale the raw colortables using the range specified.
  - Add "plot_valid_flag" to the configuration file to plot only the region of
    the input fields containing valid data.
  - Add "plot_gcarc_flag" to the configuration file to enable polyline to be
    plotted using great circle arcs or straight line segments in the grid.
  - Make changes to the output file format and column names (refer to Chapter 6
    of the MET User's Guide).
  - Make changes to the output file names (by valid time, not init time).

- Analysis tools
  - VSDB and MODE analysis tools are now available.

Beta1 Release Notes:
-------------------
- Initial release of the code.
