Model Evaluation Tools version 8.1 (May 3, 2019)

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

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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:
   - UniData's NetCDF4 Library
      - http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf
      - Both NetCDF-C and NetCDF-CXX are required
   - GNU Scientific Library (GSL), developer's version
      - http://www.gnu.org/software/gsl
   - Zlib
      - http://www.zlib.net
   - HDF5, to support NetCDF4
     - https://support.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF5
   - NCEP's BUFRLIB Library, if wishing to compile PB2NC
      - http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/sib/decoders/BUFRLIB
   - NCEP's GRIB2 Library in C (g2clib), if wishing to compile GRIB2 support
      - jasperlib, libpng, and zlib also required for GRIB2 support
      - http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/codes/GRIB2
   - Python 2.7, if wishing to compile Python support
   - HDF4 and HDF-EOS2 libraries, if wishing to compile MODIS-Regrid
      - http://www.hdfgroup.org/products/hdf4
      - http://www.hdfgroup.org/hdfeos.html
   - Cairo and FreeType, if wishing to compile MODE-Graphics
      - http://cairographics.org/releases
      - http://www.freetype.org/download.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

- Set the $CXX and $F77 environment variables to specify the C++ and FORTRAN
  compilers to be used.  If not set, configure will search for compilers and the
  ones if finds may or may not be compatible with those used to compile the
  needed third party libraries.

- If compiling on a big endian machine set the $CXXFLAGS environment variable to
  include '-DBIGENDIAN'.

- Set environment variables to point to the locations of the needed third party
  libraries.  For each library, there are three possible environment variables.
  If the library is installed in one location with an "include" subdirectory
  containing the include files and a "lib" directory containing the library
  files, the $MET_<lib> environment should be set to point to that main
  directory. If the include and library files files are installed in any other
  way, the $MET_<lib>INC and $MET_<lib>INC environment variables should both be
  set, with $MET_<lib>INC pointing to the directory with the include files and
  $MET_<lib>LIB pointing to the directory with the library files.  If
  $MET_<lib>INC and $MET_<lib>LIB are defined, then $MET_<lib> is ignored.

   - Set $MET_NETCDF to point to the main NetCDF directory, or set
     $MET_NETCDFINC to point to the directory with the NetCDF include files
     and set $MET_NETCDFLIB to point to the directory with the NetCDF
     library files.

   - Set $MET_HDF5 to point to the main HDF5 directory.

   - Set $MET_BUFR to point to the main BUFR directory, or set $MET_BUFRLIB
     to point to the directory with the BUFR library files.  Because we don't
     use any BUFR library include files, you don't need to specify
     $MET_BUFRINC.

   - Set $MET_GSL to point to the main GSL directory, or set $MET_GSLINC to
     point to the directory with the GSL include files and set $MET_GSLLIB
     to point to the directory with the GSL library files.

   - If compiling support for GRIB2, set $MET_GRIB2CINC and $MET_GRIB2CLIB
     to point to the main GRIB2C directory which contains both the include
     and library files.  These are used instead of $MET_GRIB2C since the main
     GRIB2C directory does not contain include and lib subdirectories.

   - If compiling support for PYTHON, set $MET_PYTHON_CC and $MET_PYTHON_LD
     to specify the compiler (-I) and linker (-L) flags required for python.
     Set $MET_PYTHON_CC for the directory containing the "Python.h" header file,
     which is the output of running 'python-config --cflags'.
     Set $MET_PYTHON_LD for the directory containing the python library file
     and indicate the library file names, which is the output of running
     'python-config --ldflags'.
     For example:
     MET_PYTHON_CC=`python-config --cflags`
     MET_PYTHON_LD=`python-config --ldflags`
     For more information about Python support in MET, please refer to Appendix
     F of the MET User's Guide.

   - If compiling MODIS-Regrid, set $MET_HDF to point to the main HDF directory,
     or set $MET_HDFINC to point to the directory with the HDF include files
     and set $MET_HDFLIB to point to the directory with the HDF library files.
     Also, set $MET_HDFEOS to point to the main HDF EOS directory, or set
     $MET_HDFEOSINC to point to the directory with the HDF EOS include files
     and set $MET_HDFEOSLIB to point to the directory with the HDF EOS library
     files.

   - If compiling MODE Graphics, set $MET_CAIRO to point to the main Cairo
     directory, or set $MET_CAIROINC to point to the directory with the Cairo
     include files and set $MET_CAIROLIB to point to the directory with the
     Cairo library files. Also, set $MET_FREETYPE to point to the main FreeType
     directory, or set $MET_FREETYPEINC to point to the directory with the
     FreeType include files and set $MET_FREETYPELIB to point to the directory
     with the FreeType library files.

   - When running MODE Graphics, set $MET_FONT_DIR to the directory containing
     font data required at runtime.  A link to the tarball containing this font
     data can be found on the downloads page of the MET website.

- Configure the installation for your system using the configure script.  The
  configure script has command line options to specify where to install MET and
  which MET utilities to install.  Type "./configure --help" for a detailed list
  of options, including the following:

  --prefix=PREFIX
      By default, MET will install all the files in "/usr/local/bin".  You can
      specify an installation prefix other than "/usr/local" using "--prefix",
      for instance "--prefix=$HOME" or "--prefix=`pwd`".

  --enable and --disable options for each of the MET tools.

  By default, compilation of GRIB2 support, Python support, the MODIS-Regrid
  tool, the Lidar2NC tool,and MODE-Graphics are disabled.
  Use the following options to enable them:

  --enable-grib2
      Enable compilation of utilities using GRIB2
      Requires $MET_GRIB2C

  --enable-python
      Enable compilation of python interface
      Requires $MET_PYTHON_CC and $MET_PYTHON_LD

  --enable-modis
      Enable compilation of modis
      Requires $MET_HDF and $MET_HDFEOS

  --enable-mode_graphics
      Enable compilation of mode_graphics
      Requires $MET_CAIRO, $MET_FREETYPE, and $MET_FONT_DIR

  --enable-lidar2nc
      Enable compilation of lidar2nc
      Requires $MET_HDF

  To configure MET to install all of the available tools in the "bin"
  subdirectory of your current directory, you would use the following command:

  ./configure --prefix=`pwd` --enable-grib2 --enable-python \
              --enable-modis --enable-mode_graphics --enable-lidar2nc

- Type 'make install >& make_install.log &'

- Type 'tail -f make_install.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 "<prefix>/bin"
  directory (where <prefix> is the prefix you specified on your configure
  command line) will contain 31 executables:
   - ascii2nc
   - ensemble_stat
   - gen_vx_mask
   - grid_stat
   - gis_dump_dbf
   - gis_dump_shp
   - gis_dump_shx
   - gsid2mpr
   - gsidens2orank
   - lidar2nc
   - madis2nc
   - mode
   - mode_analysis
   - modis_regrid
   - mtd
   - pb2nc
   - pcp_combine
   - plot_data_plane
   - plot_mode_field
   - plot_point_obs
   - point_stat
   - regrid_data_plane
   - series_analysis
   - shift_data_plane
   - stat_analysis
   - tc_dland
   - tc_pairs
   - tc_stat
   - wavelet_stat
   - wwmca_plot
   - wwmca_regrid

- Type 'ls <prefix>/bin' to check for the presence of the executables.

- Type 'make test >& make_test.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 make_test.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, run "make clean" then rerun your configure command adding
  "--disable-block4" to your configure command line and rebuild MET.

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

Version 8.1 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- What's New:
   - Major Enhancements: Fortify compliance, percentile thresholds, land/sea
     mask and topography in Point-Stat, the derive option in PCP-Combine, and
     Gaussian interpolation
   - New Tools: No new tools

- Changes to Output Formats:
   - Added header columns, "FCST_UNITS" and "OBS_UNITS", to indicate the units
     of the data processed to the STAT, MODE, and MTD ASCII output files.
   - Added "DX" and "DY" columns to the GRAD line type to indicate the gradient
     step sizes which are now configurable for Grid-Stat.
   - Added percentile intensity columns to the MTD 2D output files.

- Enhancements to Existing Tools:
   - Fixed bugs related to MET's Python interface, Fourier decomposition in
     Grid-Stat, HiRA in Point-Stat, and memory management in MODE.
   - Fortify is a static code analyzer tool which identifies potential security
     vulnerabilities.  Scanned the MET code base with Fortify and restructured
     it to address all high priority Fortify issues.
   - Common Libraries
      - Added support for defining thresholds as percentiles of data (see the
        user's guide for details and examples).
      - Added support for the Gaussian interpolation and regridding method,
        including the sigma option to define the shape.
      - Updated the embedded python logic so that a failures result in a warning
        instead of an error.
      - Enhanced the NetCDF library to request data using a timestring
        instead of requiring an explicit index for the time dimension.
      - Enhanced the NetCDF library to handle a wider variety of data types.
      - Added support for specifying the "file_type" option when parsing the
        "poly" configuration setting.
      - Added GRIB2 configuration filtering options, "GRIB2_ipdtmpl_index" and
        "GRIB2_ipdtmpl_val", to explicitly request product description template
        values.
      - Fixed GRIB2 support for Polar Stereographic and Lambert Conformal grids
        in the southern hemisphere.
   - PCP-Combine
      - Added the "-derive" functionality to compute the sum, min, max, range,
        mean, standard deviation, or valid data count of data from a series of
        input files.
      - Added the "-vld_thresh" command line option to specify the required
        ratio of valid data at each grid point to compute an output value.
   - Regrid-Data-Plane
      - Calculated GOES-16/17 pixel locations from metadata of the input files
        so that it can process multiple scenes of GOES-16/17 data.
   - ASCII2NC
      - Added support to the "-format" command line option to handle "aeronetv2"
        and "aeronetv3".
   - MADIS2NC
      - Added configuration file to control the computation of time summaries.
   - Point-Stat
      - Added "land_mask" and "topo_mask" config file entries to define
        land/sea mask and model topography information which control how
        matched pairs are computed when verifying at the surface.
      - Added new interpolation method named "GEOG_MATCH" to search the
        interpolation area for the closest grid point where the land/sea mask
        and topography criteria are satisfied.
   - Grid-Stat
      - Added "gradient" config file entry to define the size of the gradients
        to be computed in both the x ("dx") and y ("dy") directions.
   - MTD
      - Added percentile intensity columns to the MTD 2D output files:
        INTENSITY_10, INTENSITY_25, INTENSITY_50, INTENSITY_75, INTENSITY_90
      - Corrected timestamps in the header columns.
   - Stat-Analysis
      - When using the "-by" job command option, enable "-set_hdr" to reference
        the current values of the "-by" columns.  For example, the following job
        sets the output VX_MASK column to each observation station name found:
        -job aggregate_stat -line_type MPR -out_line_type CNT -by OBS_SID
        -set_hdr VX_MASK OBS_SID -out_stat mpr_to_cnt_by_sid.stat

Version 8.0 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- What's New:
   - Major Enhancements: python embedding, observation error logic, shapefiles
     for masking regions, point observation format overhaul, and rotated lat/lon
     projections
   - New Tools: Added three new utilities to dump shapefile information
     (gis_dump_dbf, gis_dump_shp, and gis_dump_shx)

- Changes to Output Formats:
   - Added new Ensemble Continuous Statistics line type (ECNT) for Ensemble-Stat
     and Point-Stat HiRA.
   - Removed CRPS, IGN, CRPSS, and SPREAD columns from the RHIST line type and
     move them to the new ECNT line type.
   - Added ENS_MEAN_OERR, SPREAD_OERR, SPREAD_PLUS_OERR columns to the ORANK
     line type.
   - Added ASPECT_DIFF and CURVATURE_RATIO columns to the MODE output.

- Enhancements to Existing Tools:
   - Distributed the latest set of bugfixes (details not listed here).
   - Removed many compilation warnings.
   - Python Embedding
      - Enhanced the MET tools to read gridded data by calling a Python script
        which loads data and metadata into a NumPy object.
      - Note that users must configure MET using "--enable-python" to enable
        this functionality.
      - Example "scripts/python" and "data/python" directories are now included.
      - See Appendix F of the MET User's Guide for more information.
   - Common Libraries
      - Added support for Rotated Lat/Lon projections.
      - Updated the MRMS GRIB2 table.
   - Point Pre-Processing Tools
      - Made a major change to the NetCDF point observation format written by
        PB2NC, ASCII2NC, MADIS2NC, and LIDAR2NC.  Data are now split out into
        multiple 1-dimensional arrays.  Created "table" variables to store
        unique strings and, for each observation, to store the indices for those
        tables.
      - Updated the NetCDF point observation format by replacing the UNLIMITED
        dimension with a fixed dimension, resulting in smaller file sizes.
   - Multiple Tools
      - For the statistics tools, changed the default config file "output_flag"
        settings from BOTH to NONE.
      - For climatologies, added the "match_month" flag to the "climo_mean" and
        "climo_stdev" config file dictionaries.  Setting "match_month" to FALSE
        now enable the use of persistence to define the climatology.
      - Added support for area-weighted (AW_MEAN) regridding logic.
      - Enhanced the ASCII2NC, MADIS2NC, PB2NC, STAT-Analysis, TC-Pairs, and
        TC-STAT to support the "mask.poly" config file option or "-mask_poly"
        command line option to process masking regions consistently across all
        the MET tools. They can now process the output of the Gen-Vx-Mask tool.
      - Enabled "vld_thresh = 0" in Ensemble-Stat and Series-Analysis config
        files.
      - Switched from using double precision to booleans for storing mask fields
        in Point-Stat, Grid-Stat, Ensemble-Stat, Wavelet-Stat, and
        Series-Analysis. When processing many masking regions, this will run
        faster and consume less memory.
      - Enhanced the logic for finding matching UGRD/VGRD verification tasks
        in Point-Stat and Grid-Stat to make it more robust.
   - Gen-Vx-Mask
      - Added support for the using shapefiles to define masking regions with
        the "-type shape" option.
   - Regrid-Data-Plane
      - Added the capability to read GOES-16 AOD data using the new "-coord" and
        "-qc" command line options.
   - ASCII2NC
      - Added support for the AERONET version 3 point observation format.
      - Added support for longer observation variable names.
   - PB2NC
      - Enhanced the output to include the PrepBufr values for report type,
        input report type, and instrument type for use in the observation error
        table lookup.
      - Fixed the computation of valid time for AIRNOW observations.
      - Added special handling for ANOWPM message types.
      - Rounded timestamps to the nearest second instead of truncating.
      - Enhanced the "-nmsg" command line option to be specified as the exact
        number of messages to be processed (e.g. -nmsg 25) or as a percentage
        of the messages (e.g. -nmsg 25%).
   - Time Summaries
      - Time summaries are now computed across multiple input files for ASCII2NC
        and PB2NC.
      - Enhanced the "time_summary" config file option by adding a "raw_data"
        flag to control whether the raw input values are written or only the
        time summary values.
      - Generalized the "time_summary.width" config file option to an integer
        for centered time windows (existing) or a dictionary with begin and end
        time offsets for uncentered windows (new).
   - Grid-Stat
      - Fixed the very slow computation of neighborhood methods fractional
        coverage fields introduced in met-7.0 when supporting circular
        neighborhoods.  (This was also posted as a bugfix for met-7.0.)
      - Fixed a memory allocation issue, leading to faster run times.
   - Point-Stat
      - The ECNT line type is now computed when applying the HiRA methodology,
        in which nearby grid points are treated as ensemble member values.
   - Point-Stat and Ensemble-Stat
      - Added the "mask.llpnt" config file option to appply thresholds to filter
        point observations by applying thresholds to their lat/lon values
        directly.
   - Ensemble-Stat
      - Added support for observation error perturbations. (See
        "data/config/README" for details on these settings.)
      - Added a default lookup table in "data/table_files/obs_error_table.txt"
        but also support the MET_OBS_ERROR_TABLE environment variable for user
        -specified table.
      - Added the "obs_error" dictionary to the config file to specify how
        observation error perturbations should be applied.
      - Added the capability to write statistics for perturbed and unperturbed
        data to the new ECNT line type.
      - Removed the columns from the RHIST line type that were moved to ECNT.
      - Renamed the "-ssvar_mean" command line option as "-ens_mean", but the
        "-ssvar_mean" option is still quietly supported.
   - MODE
      - Replaced the "area_thresh" and "inten_perc_thresh" config file options
        with the more generic "filter_attr_name" and "filter_attr_thresh"
        options.
      - Added "aspect_diff" and "curvature_ratio" as new inputs to the fuzzy
        logic engine and added corresponding columns to the output file.
   - Series-Analysis
      - Added debug messages to inform the user about missing data.
   - STAT-Analysis
      - Added the capability to aggregate the ECNT line type and derive it from
        input ORANK lines.
      - Updated the computation of MSVE statistic in the VCNT line type to be
        done using partial sums rather than matched pair values.  This enables
        it to be computed from VL1L2 lines in STAT-Analysis.
   - STAT-Analysis and TC-STAT
      - Added the "-column_union" job command option to summarize values across
        multiple columns.
   - Scripting
      - Added a sample Rscript (scripts/Rscripts/plot_ensemble.R) for plotting
        ensemble line types.
      - Updated the pntnc2ascii.R Rscript to handle the obs_var variable.

Version 7.0 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- What's New:
   - Major Enhancements: add vector statistics for winds, finer control of
     configuration options, message type groups, and WMO mean summary statistics

- Enhancements to Existing Tools:
   - Distribute the latest set of bugfixes (details not listed here).
   - Vector statistics for winds
      - Add vector wind speeds to the existing VL1L2 line type (F_SPEED_BAR and
        O_SPEED_BAR).
      - Add a new VCNT line type containing statistics for wind vectors.
      - Enhance STAT-Analysis to parse the updated VL1L2 line type, parse the
        new VCNT line type, and derive VCNT statistics from input VL1L2 lines.
      - Enhance STAT-Analysis to read U/V matched pair (MPR) lines and derive
        VL1L2 or VCNT output lines.
   - Config file options
      - Refactor config file logic for Point-Stat, Grid-Stat, and Ensemble-Stat.
      - Whenever possible, parse config file options separately for each
        verification task rather than parsing from the top level.
      - See default config files for the list of options which may be specified
        separately for each "obs.field" entry.
      - Parse the "regrid" option separately for each field so that regridding
        logic can be customized for each field (e.g. use BUDGET for
        precipitation and BILIN for temperature).
      - Add "message_type_group" config file option to define message types that
        should be processed together as a group.  Enhance PB2NC, Point-Stat,
        and Ensemble-Stat to parse and process groups of message types.
   - PB2NC
      - Add specialized processing for AIRNOW message types to use the TPHR
        value as the accumulation interval and the QCIND value as the quality
        control value.
   - STAT-Analysis
      - Enhance the existing summary job type.
        - Print debug messages and warnings when summary includes multiple
          values for each header column.
        - Add three new output columns for WMO-approved means of daily scores
          (WMO_TYPE, WMO_MEAN, and WMO_WEIGHTED_MEAN).
        - Process columns of data from multiple input line types when the
          following format is used "-column LINE_TYPE:COLUMN".
        - Add -derive job command option to automatically compute statistics
          on the fly from input partial sums (SL1L2/SAL1L2 -> CNT, VL1L2 ->
          VCNT, and CTC -> CTS).
   - Point-Stat
      - Append the shape to the INTERP_MTHD column but omit it for NEAREST,
        BILIN, and BUDGET methods.
   - Grid-Stat
      - Add "nbrhd.field" config file option to control the computation of
        fractional coverage fields.
   - Ensemble-Stat
      - Add "nc_var_str" config file option to customize NetCDF variable names.
      - Add "ensemble_flag.latlon" config file option.
   - MTD
      - Rename output files using a more explicit naming convention:
         - Rename *_3d_ss.txt to *_3d_simple_single.txt.
         - Rename *_3d_sc.txt to *_3d_simple_cluster.txt.
         - Rename *_3d_ps.txt to *_3d_pair_single.txt.
         - Rename *_3d_pc.txt to *_3d_pair_cluser.txt.
      - Update output file conventions to match the logic of MODE:
         - Rename the "OBJ_ID" column to "OBJECT_ID".
         - Rename the "CLUSTER_ID" column to "OBJECT_CAT".
         - Change object naming conventions for "OBJECT_ID" and "OBJECT_CAT":
           - FROM: F_#,  O_#,  F_#_O_#,   CF_#,  CO_#,  and CF_#_CF_#
           - TO:   F###, O###, F###_O###, CF###, CO###, and CF###_CO###
           - Where ### is a 3-digit object number with leading 0's.
           - Indicate unmatched objects with a 3-digit "000" object number.
         - Only write pair information to *_pair_cluster.txt for matches.

Version 6.1 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- What's New:
   - Major Enhancements: generalized point observations, unit conversion, data
     censoring, economic cost/loss value, gradients, fourier decomposition,
     relative position, and binned climatologies

- Enhancements to Existing Tools:
   - Distribute the latest set of bugfixes (details not listed here).
   - Update "-version" command line option to include patch level info.
   - Grid library code
      - Add support for Gaussian grids.
      - Add support for Polar Stereographic CF-Compliant NetCDF files.
      - Re-orient NetCDF lat/lon grid.
      - Support northern and southern hemisphere Lambert Conformal grids.
   - Regridding
      - Add "shape" config option to the "regrid" and "interp" dictionaries to
        define a "square" (legacy) or "circle" area.
      - Automatically regrid masking regions to verification domain on the fly
        using nearest-neighbor interpolation.
   - Config file options
      - Add "GRIB2_stat_type" config file filtering option.
      - Fix "GRIB_lvl_typ" config file filtering option for GRIB2 data.
      - Add "convert(x)" config file option to define unit conversion functions.
         - For example, convert(x) = C_to_F(x);
      - Add "censor_thresh" and "censor_val" config file options to apply a
        filtering thresholds and replacement values.
         - For example, censor_thresh = [ <0 ]; censor_val = [ 0 ];
   - MODE
      - Remove "zero_border_size" config file option.
      - Remove "raw_thresh" config file option which is replaced by censoring.
      - Remove "AREA_FILTER" column from MODE output _obj.txt files.
      - Remove "FILTER" line from MODE output _cts.txt files.
      - Add output columns for "N_VALID", "GRID_RES", and "OBTYPE".
      - Speed up convex hull detection algorithm.
   - Gen-Vx-Mask
      - Add "lat" and "lon" masking types to threshold grid latitude and/or
        longitude values.
        - For example, -type lat -thresh >-10&&<=30
   - PB2NC
      - Add support for reading BUFR files directly, rather than just PREPBUFR.
      - Replace "obs_grib_code" config file option with "obs_bufr_var".
      - Add "obs_bufr_map", "obs_prepbufr_map", "message_type_map", and
        "time_summary" config file options.
      - Add "-index" command line option to list all available observations.
   - ASCII2NC
      - Enable input column 7 to contain an integer GRIB code (legacy) or
        string variable name.
   - Point-Stat and Ensemble-Stat
      - Generalize the specification of point observations using the variable
        name rather than mapping to a GRIB code.
   - Plot-Point-Obs
      - Add "-obs_var" command line option.
   - Grid-Stat and Point-Stat
      - Add Root-Mean Squared Forecast (RMSFA) and Observation (RMSOA) Anomalies
        to the CNT line type.
      - Add new Economic Cost-Loss Value (ECLV) STAT line type derived from
        CTC or PCT lines.
      - Add "eclv_points" config file option.
      - Add initial support for binned climatologies by adding "climo_stdev" and
        "climo_cdf_bins" config file options.
      - When computing BSS, use the "climo_mean" and "climo_stdev" fields to
        derive the climatological probability values to be verified.
   - Grid-Stat
      - Add new Gradient (GRAD) STAT line type for statistics derived from
        gradients, including the S1 score.
      - Add option to compute 1-dimensional Fourier Decompositions when
        generating CNT, SL1L2, SAL1L2, VL1L2, and VAL1L2 output lines.
      - Add "fourier" config file dictionary to specify wave numbers.
      - Append fourier wave number information to the "INTERP_MTHD" column.
      - Enhance "nc_pairs_flag" config file option to write derived "fourier"
        and "gradient" fields.
   - Ensemble-Stat
      - Add "skip_const" config file option to exclude points where all ensemble
        members and the observation value are identical.
      - Add "obs_thresh" config file option to only include points where the
        observation value meets the filtering threshold.
      - Add "BSS_SMPL" statistic to the PSTD line type.
      - Add new Relative Position (RELP) STAT line type.
   - Stat-Analysis
      - Enhance "-column_thresh" job command option to compute column difference
        with or without absolute values.
      - Add "RANGE" and "IQR" (Interquartile Range) columns for the summary job.
      - Allow for NA values when filtering data.
         - For example, -column_thresh CLIMO != NA
      - Add support for specifying derived columns, "INIT_HOUR" and
        "VALID_HOUR".
         - For example, -by INIT_HOUR
      - Add support for aggregating new ECLV, GRAD, and RELP line types.
      - Add support for reading CTC or PCT and deriving ECLV.
      - Add support for reading ORANK and deriving RELP.

Version 6.0 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- What's New:
    - METv6.0 includes new tools and enhancements
      - New Tools: lidar2nc
      - Major Enhancements: NetCDF4 support, MET-TC E-Decks, HiRA verification,
        description header column

- New Tools:
    - The lidar2nc reformats HDF4 CALIPSO data files into a NetCDF point
      observation format for use by Point-Stat and Ensemble-Stat.

- Enhancements to Existing Tools:
    - Distribute the latest set of bugfixes (details not listed here).
    - Enhance MET to handle southern polar stereographic grids.
    - NetCDF
       - Enhance MET tools to read/write NetCDF4 files and support a
         configurable compression level ("nc_compression" configuration option,
         ${MET_NC_COMPRESS} environment variable, and "-compress"
         command line option, listed in order of precedence).
       - Support "add_offset" and "scale_factor" attributes to read NetCDF
         variables of type short, int, float, and double.
       - Add logic to reorient latitudes to be south to north, if needed.
    - GRIB1 and GRIB2 files
       - Refine logic for defining custom GRIB tables using the
         ${MET_GRIB_TABLES} environment variable (previously named
         ${USER_GRIB_TABLES}).
       - Support filtering GRIB2 data by product definition template, generating
         process, ensemble type, or derived product type using "GRIB2_pdt",
         "GRIB2_process", "GRIB2_ens_type", and "GRIB2_der_type" configuration
         options, respectively.
    - Probabilities
       - Support shorthand convention for reading/writing probabilistic
         thresholds where "==n" is interpreted as equally spaced thresholds
         (e.g. "==0.25" means ">=0.00,>=0.25,>=0.50,>=0.75,>=1.00").
       - Add new "prob_as_scalar" configuration option to disable the
         application of probabilistic verification methods.
    - Additional configuration options
       - Add new description ("DESC") header column to MET ASCII output files.
         The description string may be set separately for each verification task
         defined in the configuration file.
       - Add ${MET_TMP_DIR} environment variable to specify where temporary
         files should be written and override the "tmp_dir" configuration
         option.
       - Remove restriction that UGRD must be immediately followed by VGRD at
         the same level to compute VL1L2 and VAL1L2 output.
    - ASCII2NC and MADIS2NC
       - Add "-mask_sid" command line option to define a group of station ID's.
       - Reduce runtime by reading blocks of observations.
    - PB2NC
       - Enable "grid" configuration option in "mask" to be set to a named grid
         or gridded data file.
    - Point-Stat
       - Add "hira" configuration options to support High Resolution Assessment
         (HiRA) verification, a neighborhood verification method for point
         observations.
    - Ensemble-Stat
       - Add ensemble spread to the output: "SPREAD" column in RHIST line type
         and "ENS_SPREAD" in the ORANK line type.
       - Dramatically reduce runtime with more efficient memory management and
         data access methods.
    - Point-Stat and Ensemble-Stat
       - Refine logic for the "duplicate_flag" configuration option to check for
         duplicate observations at the same station.
       - Add "obs_summary" and "obs_perc_value" configuration options to derive
         summary metrics for multiple observations at the same station within
         the time window: "NONE", "MIN", "MAX", "UW_MEAN", "DW_MEAN", "MEDIAN",
         or "PERC" to use all observations, the minimum, maximum, average,
         time-weighted average, median, or a particular percentile,
         respectively.
       - Add five new "method" options in the "interp" section: "UPPER_LEFT",
         "UPPER_RIGHT", "LOWER_RIGHT", and "LOWER_LEFT" to select the forecast
         value at a particular grid box corner and "BEST" to select the forecast
         value which most closely matches the observation value.
    - Gen-Vx-Mask
       - Add support for masking by the position of the sun using the solar
         altitude ("solar_alt") option azimuth ("solar_azi") "-type" options.
    - Regrid-Data-Plane
       - Change the "-name" command line option to a comma-separated list of
         output variable names for each field specified.
    - PCP-Combine
       - Switch error for subtracting data with different initialization times
         to a warning.
    - Grid-Stat
       - Add "shape" configuration option (SQUARE or CIRCLE) to the "interp"
         dictionary.  Will be applied to other MET tools in future releases.
       - Add "apply_mask" configuration option to "nc_pairs_flag" to indicate
         whether matched pairs should be written for each masking region.
       - Allow Grid-Stat to run with only matched pairs output requested
         ("nc_pairs_flag") but no statistics computed ("output_flag").
       - Dramatically reduce runtime with more efficient memory management.
    - MODE
       - Add support for arrays in the "merge_thresh" configuration option.
    - MODE-Analysis
       - Allow "-lookin" option to be set to a directory or filename.
    - MTD
       - Add cluster object centroid coordinates to the 2D attributes file.
       - Add "DURATION_DIFF" column to the 3D pair attributes file.
       - Add "CDIST_TRAVELLED" column to the 3D simple attributes file to
         indicate the total distance travelled for 2D object slices.
    - GSID2MPR
       - Reduce runtime by refining the logic of checking for duplicates.
    - STAT-Analysis
       - Add "-mask_sid" job command option to define a group of station ID's.
    - WWMCA-Regrid
       - Generalize to handle a wider variety of input naming conventions.
       - Add "write_pixel_age" and "swap_endian" configuration options to
         process pixel age data rather than cloud data.
    - MET-TC
       - Enhance TC-Pairs to read E-Deck files using the "-edeck" command line
         option and write the new PROBRIRW line type containing probabilities
         of rapid intensity changes.
       - Enhance TC-Stat to parse and filter PROBRIRW lines.
       - Add new "probrirw" job type to TC-Stat to apply probabilistic
         methods to PROBRIRW lines and write PCT, PSTD, PRC, and PJC lines.
       - Add "lead_req" configuration option to TC-Pairs and TC-Stat to specify
         required lead times that must be present for a track to be retained.
       - Modify TC-Pairs to derive interp12, consensus, lag, and baseline tracks
         before applying track filtering logic.
       - Distribute enhancements to the plot_tcmpr.R Rscript plotting utility.
    - Enhance logic of STAT-Analysis, MODE-Analysis, and TC-Stat to process
      output from all previous versions of MET by reading version-specific
      column offset files rather than hard-coding those values.

Version 5.2 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- What's New:
    - METv5.2 includes several enhancements to existing tools.

- Enhancements to Existing Tools:
    - Distribute the latest set of bugfixes (details not listed here).
    - Update all tools to support "-version" and "-help" command line options.
    - Update map data used for plotting and provide both low (default) and high
      resolution verions.
    - Add new "FORCE" interpolation method to compare gridded datasets whose
      grid dimensions match but full grid definitions do not.
    - GRIB1 and GRIB2 files
      - Enhance GRIB1/2 table support by updating GRIB table definitions and
        enhancing logic when reading GRIB files.
      - Support ${USER_GRIB_TABLES} environment variable to define the location
        of custom, user-defined GRIB tables.
      - Add configuration file support for "GRIB1_center" and "GRIB1_subcenter"
        to specify the GRIB1 center and sub-center values to be found.
      - Add configuration file support for "GRIB2_cntr", "GRIB2_ltab", and
        "GRIB2_mtab" to specify the GRIB2 center, local table, and master table
        values to be found.
      - Enhance MET to parse ensemble information from the extended PDS
        following NCEP's usage.
      - Add "GRIB_ens" configuration option to specify which ensemble member
        should be extracted.
      - Rename "GRIB1_rec" configuration option to "GRIB1_code" to more
        accurately reflect its function.
    - ASCII2NC
      - Add "vld_freq" and "vld_thresh" to the "time_summary" configuration
        option to specify the expected frequency of observations and omit output
        when not enough valid data is present.
    - Gen-Vx-Mask
      - Add support for "box" masking type to mask out a square of configurable
        width around each lat/lon location.
    - Grid-Stat
      - Add "grid_weight_flag" configuration option to apply grid box area
        weighting for grid-to-grid verification.
      - Add "nc_pairs_flag.weight" configuration option to write out the
        grid box area weights.
      - Add "nc_pairs_flag.nbrhd" configuration option to write out the
        fractional coverage fields computed for neighborhood verification.
    - Ensemble-Stat
      - Add "grid_weight_flag" configuration option to apply grid box area
        weighting for grid-to-grid verification.
      - Add "ensemble_flag.weight" configuration option to write out the grid
        box area weights.
    - MODE
      - Enhance MODE to run multiple convolution radii and thresholds in a
        single call.
      - Enable the "conv_radius" and "conv_thresh" configuration options to be
        specified as single values or arrays.
      - Add "quilt" configuration option to specify whether all permutations of
        convolution radii and threshold should be run.
    - Series-Analysis
      - Add "-paired" command line option to enable missing data to result
        in a warning rather than an error.
    - WWMCA-Regrid
      - Enhance logic to read a many datasets written in the WWMCA binary format.
      - Add "init_time", "valid_time", and "accum_time" configuration options to
        override the default values parsed from the input filename.
      - Refactor tool to use regridding functionality common to many MET tools.
    - TC-Pairs
      - Refine Interp12 to also apply logic to models ending with '3'.
      - Add "best_technique" and "oper_technique" configuration options to
        specify the model names for BEST and operational tracks.
      - Add "anly_track" configuration options to specify whether model analysis
        tracks should be found in the ADECK, BDECK, or both.

Version 5.1 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- What's New:
    - METv5.1 includes several new tools and enhancements:
      - New Tools: MODE Time Domain (mtd), regrid_data_plane, shift_data_plane,
        gen_vx_mask, gsid2mpr, and gsidens2mpr
      - Major Enhancments: Automated regridding of data, generalized definition
        of thresholds, conditional continuous statistics, and the expanded use
        of climatology data

- New Tools:
    - The mtd (MODE Time Domain) tool runs on time-series of gridded data fields
      to define 3-dimensional space-time objects.
    - The regrid_data_plane tool regrids one or more gridded data fields to the
      user-defined output grid.
    - The shift_data_plane tool reads a single gridded data field and applies a
      rigid shift defined by source and destination lat/lon values.
    - The gen_vx_mask tool replaces the gen_poly_mask and gen_circle_mask tools
      and adds support for track masking and accumulating multiple masks
      together.
    - The gsid2mpr tool reads one or more binary GSI diagnostic files and
      reformats them into the MPR line type for further analysis by the
      STAT-Analysis tool.
    - The gsidens2orank tool reads an ensemble of binary GSI diagnostic files
      and reformats them into the ORANK line type for further analysis by the
      STAT-Analysis tool.

- Enhancements to Existing Tools:
    - Distribute the latest set of bugfixes (details not listed here).
    - ASCII2NC
        - Add support for WWSIS data.
        - Add support AERONET observations.
    - MADIS2NC
        - Add support for acarsProfiles data, as provided to MET by AER.
    - TC-Pairs
        - Reduce the minimum number of required input ATCF columns from 18 to 8.
        - Add 16 columns to the TCST output line type for the ADECK and BDECK
          values for RADP, RRP, MRD, GUSTS, EYE, DIR, SPEED, and DEPTH.
    - TC-Stat
        - Add rapid intensification and weakening (RIRW) event category job
          type.
        - Replace references to "rapid_inten" with "rirw" to shorten command
          line and config file options.
        - Redefined config file options landfall _beg and landfall_end as
          timestring in HH[MMSS] format rather than an integer number of
          seconds, but make it backward compatible.  Interpret integers as
          seconds and strings as timestrings.
        - Add support for reading and filtering extra columns of data at the end
          of the input ASCII files.
    - Stat-Analysis
        - When passed a directory, search for .stat files.  When passed a file
          name, read it regardless of the extension.
        - Add support for reading and filtering extra columns of data at the end
          of the input ASCII files.
        - Add new ramp job type based on DYDT logic or the swinging door
          algorithm.
        - Add swinging door algorithm to the new vx_time_series library.
        - Add -out_stat output to write aggregated actual STAT lines.
        - Add -set_hdr option to explicitly set output STAT header column
          values.
        - Add support for ORANK to SSVAR aggregate_stat job type.
        - Add -out_cnt_logic and -out_wind_logic job command options to handle
          conditional continuous verification.
        - Add -out_thresh job command option as a shortcut for -out_fcst_thresh
          and -out_obs_thresh.
        - Add -out_wind_thresh job command option as a shortcut for
          -out_fcst_wind_thresh and -out_obs_wind_thresh.
        - Add -column_thresh job command option to be consistent with other
          tools, but retain -column_min, -column_max, and -column_eq for
          backward compatibility.
    - PCP-Combine
        - Rename -varname command line option to -name to be consistent with
          other MET tools.
        - Rename -config command line option to -field to be consistent with
          other MET tools.  Silently support -config for backward compatibility.
    - Grid-Stat
        - Add SAL1L2 and VAL1L2 output line types.
    - Series-Analysis
        - Add SAL1L2 output statistics types.
    - Automated regridding
        - Add automated regridding support to the MET statistics tools to regrid
          to verify on the forecast grid, observation grid, or an independent,
          user-defined grid.
        - Add regrid dictionary to the config files to define how regridding
          should be performed.
        - Add vx_regrid library to support automated regridding.
    - Generalized thresholding:
        - Generalized definition of thresholds across all the MET tools.  Use
          && or || to string together event definition logic.
    - Conditional continuous verification
        - Add support for conditional continuous verification to Point-Stat,
          Grid-Stat, Series-Analysis.
        - Add cnt_thresh and cnt_logic config file options to specify what
          filtering thresholds should be applied.
    - Climatology Data
        - Add support for reading climatology data to Point-Stat, Grid-Stat,
          Ensemble-Stat, and Series-Analysis.
        - Add climo_mean dictionary to the config files for these tools to
          specify the climatology data to be read.
        - Remove the -climo command line option from Point-Stat since the new
          functionality replaces the old.
        - Add anomaly correlation (ANOM_CORR) to the CNT line type.
        - Add the climatology value (CLIMO) to ORANK line type.
        - Add the climatology-based Brier score (BRIERCL) and the Brier Skill
          Score (BSS) to the PSTD line type.
        - Add the Continuous Ranked Probability Skill Score (CRPSS) to the RHIST
          line type.
    - ConfigConstants
        - Add exit_on_warning option.  If true, any warning message results in
          an error and returning of bad status.
        - Add output_precision option to specify the number of non-zero decimal
          places to be written to ASCII output files.
    - File I/O Changes
        - Improved logic when writing large unixtime values to NetCDF files.
          Write them as strings rather than integers, which caused integer
          overflow.
        - Better handling of timing information and lat/lon dimensions from
          CF-compliant NetCDF files.
        - When writing gridded NetCDF output, write lat/lon variables for
          lat/lon grids as 1-dimensional.  For all other projection types,
          continue writing 2-dimensional lat/lon variables.
        - Add obtype configuration entry to Grid-Stat, Ensemble-Stat,
          Wavelet-Stat, MODE, and Series-Analysis.  It's string value is written
          to the output files.
        - Add Rscript to scripts directory named gspairs2mpr.R to read Grid-Stat
          NetCDF matches pairs and write MPR output lines.
        - Update the vx_data2d_pinterp library to also read the output of the
          wrf_interp utility.
    - Summary of changes to existing line types:
        - CNT: Add columns for anomaly correlation (ANOM_CORR), mean error
          squared (ME2), and the mean squared error skill score (MSESS) plus
          confidence limits
        - PSTD: Add columns for climatological brier score (BRIERCL) and brier
          skill score (BSS).
        - ORANK: Add columns for ensemble mean (ENS_MEAN) and climatology
          (CLIMO).
        - RHIST: Add column for continuous ranked probability skill score
          (CRPSS).
        - TCMPR: Add 16 columns for the ADECK and BDECK values for RADP, RRP,
          MRD, GUSTS, EYE, DIR, SPEED, and DEPTH.

Version 5.0 Release Notes:
-------------------------

- What's New:
   - METv5.0 includes a major overhaul of the build process, the
     addition of two new tools, and several enhancement to existing tools.
   - The build and installation process is now done using autoconf by running
     the "configure" script followed by "make install" and "make test".

- New Tools:
   - The new gen_circle_mask tool generates a verification masking region
     similar to the gen_poly_mask tool.  It draws a circle of configurable
     radius around one or more lat/lon locations.  It may be useful in
     defining areas close to radar locations or the area around a hurricane.
   - The new plot_mode_field tool reads one or more MODE NetCDF output files
     and creates PNG images to display the data.

- Enhancements to Existing Tools:
    - Distributed latest set of bug fixes for METv4.1.
    - Changes to existing logic:
       - Fixed bug in STAT-Analysis when aggregating FSS values across multiple
         cases.
       - Fixed bug in MODE where object intensity percentiles were only being
         computed over values greater than zero, rather than the full range.
       - Fixed bug in pcp_combine -varname option that was preventing the use
         of underscores in the output variable name.
       - Enhanced TC-Pairs to refine interpretation of zeros as bad data in
         many of the input ATCF columns.
       - Enhanced MADIS2NC by adding support for mesonet datasets.
       - Refined logic in TC-Pairs when computing consensus tracks by ensuring
         that the required members are present at each lead time.
       - Major overhaul of the TC-Dland tool to compute global distances to land
         rather than being limited to the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific basins.
         Add a global 1/10th degree distance to land data file to the release.
       - Enhanced STAT-Analysis by adding support for an aggregate_stat job type
         conversion of MPR to WDIR that reads UGRD and VGRD matched pair lines
         and computes aggregated wind direction errors.  Added
         -out_fcst_wind_thresh and -out_obs_wind_thresh options to filter the
         U/V pairs by wind speed prior to computing wind direction errors.
    - Added new output statistics:
       - Enhanced the SL1L2 and SAL1L2 line types from Point-Stat and Grid-Stat
         by adding the mean absolute error (MAE), enabling MAE to be aggregated
         across multiple cases.
       - Enhanced the CNT line type from Point-Stat and Grid-Stat by adding the
         inter-quartile range of the error (EIQR) and the median absolute
         deviation (MAD).
       - Enhanced the CTS line type from Point-Stat and Grid-Stat by adding the
         log odds ratio (LODDS), odds ratio skill score (ORSS), extreme
         dependency score (EDS), symmetric EDS (SEDS), extreme dependency index
         (EDI), symmetric EDI (SEDI), and the bias-adjusted Gilbert skill score
         (BAGSS).
       - Enhanced the NBRCNT line type from Grid-Stat by adding the asymptotic
         fractions skill score (AFSS), uniform fractions skill score (UFSS), and
         the forecast and observation rates (F_RATE and O_RATE).
       - Enhanced the MPR line type from Point-Stat and the ORANK line type from
         Ensemble-Stat by adding the observation quality flag value.
       - Enhanced Ensemble-Stat by adding the probability integral transform
         histogram (PHIST) line type.
       - Enhanced STAT-Analysis to aggregate and recompute all the new
         statistics listed above.
    - Added new command line and configuration options:
       - Enhanced Point-Stat and Ensemble-Stat by adding a station id exclusion,
         sid_exc, option to the configuration file to easily discard specific
         stations known to contain bad data.
         See met-5.0/data/config/README for details.
       - Enhanced ASCII2NC and MADIS2NC by adding the -mask_poly and -mask_grid
         command line options to filter the point observations spatially.
       - Enhanced STAT-Analysis to support comma-separated lists of values on
         the command line rather than using the same command line switch
         multiple times.
       - Enhanced the configuration files for MODE, Grid-Stat, and Wavelet-Stat
         to allow the user to select which fields should be included in the
         gridded NetCDF output.
         See met-5.0/data/config/README for details.
       - Enhanced ASCII2NC by adding a message_type_map entry to the
         configuration file which defines a mapping of input little_R report
         types to output message types.  Previously this mapping had been hard
         coded and any changes required recompiling.
       - Enhanced MODE by adding a shift_right entry to configuration file to
         shift a global grid by some number of grid points.  This enables the
         user to define the location of the longitude cut line for global grids.
       - Enhanced TC-Pairs by refining the interp12 configuration option.
         See met-5.0/data/config/README_TC for details.
       - Enhanced TC-Stat by adding an event_equal_lead configuration option
         to list specific lead times that must be present for a track to be
         included in the event equalization logic.
       - Enhanced TC-Stat by refining the rapid intensification criteria in the
         rapid_inten section of the configuration file.
         See met-5.0/data/config/README_TC for details.
    - Improved input and output behavior:
       - Enhanced support for reading TRMM NetCDF data from these sources:
         http://gdata1.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/daac-bin/G3/gui.cgi?instance_id=TRMM_3-Hourly
         http://gdata1.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/daac-bin/G3/gui.cgi?instance_id=TRMM_3B42_Daily
       - Enhanced MET's handling of NetCDF files by reading and applying the
         FillValue and/or missing_value variable attributes when parsing gridded
         data.
       - Enhanced STAT-Analysis and MODE-Analysis to include column headers in
         the output file specified with the -dump_row option.
       - Enhanced the NetCDF output of MODE by adding convex hull polyline
         points.
       - Add the model name as a global attribute to the NetCDF output of
         Grid-Stat, Wavelet-Stat, Ensemble-Stat, MODE, and Series-Analysis.
       - Reduced the file size of the PostScript files generated by the MET
         tools by adding zlib compression.
       - Enhanced the MODE PostScript files by placing the data into tables.
       - Right-justify all numeric output columns in the ASCII output of MET.
       - Update the GRIB1 and GRIB2 table definitions:
         http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/docs/on388
         http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/docs/grib2/grib2_doc.shtml

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.
