January 2021 software release

The January 2021 release of our software provides many new features, improvements and fixes!

ecCodes

ecCodes, the heart of GRIB and BUFR handling, brings performance improvements, latest WMO GRIB/BUFR tables, contributions from users and several smaller features/bug fixes in version 2.20.0.
Please note that ecCodes' Python 2 interface is no longer being developed. Users are strongly advised to migrate to Python 3.
Also the pip package name has changed to 'eccodes'. Please use this command to install the ecCodes Python bindings:

pip install eccodes

Magics

Magics, ECMWF's plotting library, brings more improvements in version 4.5.3 including :

• New palettes have been imported from matplotlib and Colorbrewer (https://colorbrewer2.org/): The full list can be found at Predefined palettes in Magics.

• Improvements have been done on the tilted perspective (tpers) projection allowing now to create nice animations. 

     Click on the globe below to see it spin.

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• Memory leaks have been found and fixed. 

Metview

Metview 5.10.2 brings a number of fixes for performance and stability, including:

• fixed issue where the Hovmoeller module's 'expand' option did not work
• fixed issue that caused a crash when plotting a tephigram using the Stations module for location input
• performance optimisation in the lookup function - see Fieldset Functions
• added two new Gallery examples that answer commonly asked questions about setting up curve plotting
• built with the latest ecCodes and Magics, Metview will of course inherit their improvements, and the new Magics palettes will be available to browse in the Contouring icon's editor
• more - see the release notes!

Metview's Python interface version 1.6.0 brings new features, including:

• added png driver keyword arguments to setoutput('jupyter') to control output size in notebooks
• added write(filename) method for classes Fieldset, Geopoints, GeopointSet, Bufr and NetCDF
• added ability to construct a Fieldset from a list of Fieldsets, e.g. Fieldset([f1, f2, f3])

Metview is built at ECMWF with all the versions of our libraries listed in the table below, and all are included in the Metview Bundle. 

The software versions of this release are available on all ECMWF computer systems as "new" versions. These versions are also available on conda and PyPi. If you encounter any issues please feel free to send feedback to Software.Support@ecmwf.int.