GLM Plugin - 1.7

New McIDAS-V features under development. Feedback is appreciated.
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mug_admin
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GLM Plugin - 1.7

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A plugin designed to display data from local GOES-R Series (GOES-16 and later) Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) netCDF files is now included in the Plugin Manager. Below are steps to make use of the plugin to display GLM Groups data, as well as a sample animation with GLM overlaid on ABI L1b Band 13 data:

Below are some steps for working with local GLM netCDF files in McIDAS-V.

  1. From the Main Display window, go to Tools>Plugins>Manage to open the Plugin Manager.
  2. At the bottom of the Plugin Manager, click the green plus icon next to Data Sources>GLM NetCDF Files.
  3. Restart McIDAS-V.
  4. Go to the General>Files/Directories chooser and navigate to the directory with your data.
    *** Note that the files must be mission-standard format and follow the GRB naming convention, and thus look similar to OR_GLM-L2-LCFA_G16_s20172151749200_e20172151749400_c20172151749467.nc. ***
  5. From the Plugin, under Data Type dropdown in the General>Files/Directories chooser, you will see three new data types dependent on what you are looking to plot:

    • Events: GLM Events Data files
    • Flashes: GLM Flashes Data files
    • Groups: GLM Groups Data files
      For this example, I'll use Groups.
  6. Select the GLM Groups Data files Data Type.
  7. At this point you can select 1 (20-second) file, or you can select multiple files at once to create a longer loop of data. If multiple files are selected, they will be merged into one data source. In my case, I'm selecting 30 files at once with Shift+left-click.
  8. Click Add Source.
  9. Each data point in every file technically has its own time step within the data. Because of this, if you try displaying the data as-is from the Field Selector, McIDAS-V will want to plot thousands of time steps. You can work around this by adjusting the time binning settings. To do this, from the Field Selector, right click on the Data Source on the left side of the tab (mine is called "30 files") and choose Properties.
  10. At the bottom of the Properties tab of the Properties window, set the time binning as you desire. In my example here, I'll set Bin Size and Round To both to "2 minutes". This will allow for creating a loop of data where each timestep is 2 minutes, compressing all of the data points into fewer timesteps. Note that you will need to click on the little calendar icon for both Bin Size and Round To to manually enter 2 minutes for each of them. Click OK once you have set your time binning values.
  11. From the Field Selector, choose the Point Data field and the Point Data Plot display.
  12. If desired, subset a domain of data in the Region tab. Also, form the Layout Model tab, click the double-down blue arrow icon next to "None" and choose "GLM>Group"
  13. Click Create Display
  14. By default, McIDAS-V does some decluttering to most Point Data Plot displays, so not every point will be displayed until you zoom in far on the data. Optionally, you can disable the Declutter checkbox in the Layer Controls to plot all of the data points.

Here is a sample animation of GLM data over a single time of ABI L1b Band 13 (10.3um) Temperature data.
GLM Animation
GLM Animation

Thank you,
McIDAS User Services
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