ACT Version 2 Release Guide#

In preparation for version 2.0.0 of ACT, codes were standardized for consistency purposes as further defined in the Contributor’s Guide. These changes will break some users code as the API has changed. This guide will detail the changes for each module.

Discovery#

Functionality has not changed but the naming of the API have changed for all discovery scripts to be more consistent and streamlined in their naming.

Existing Function

New Function

get_armfiles.download_data

arm.download_arm_data

get_armfiles.get_arm_doi

arm.get_arm_doi

get_asos.get_asos

asos.get_asos_data

get_airnow.*

airnow.* Func Names Same

get_cropscape.croptype

cropscape.get_crop_type
get_noaapsl.

download_noaa_psl_data
noaapsl.

download_noaa_psl_data

get_neon.get_site_products

neon.get_neon_site_products

get_neon.get_product_avail

neon.get_neon_product_avail

get_neon.download_neon_data

neon.download_neon_data

get_surfrad.download_surfrad

surfrad.download_surfrad_data

IO#

Similar to the discovery module, functionality has not changed but the naming convention has for similar reasoning.

Existing Function

New Function

armfiles

act.io.arm

armfiles.read_netcdf()

arm.read_arm_netcdf

armfiles.read_mmcr

arm.read_arm_mmcr

csvfiles

csv

Plotting#

A major change to how secondary y-axes are handled was implemented in the TimeSeriesDisplay and DistributionDisplay modules. Currently, those plotting routines return a 1-D array of display axes. This has always made the secondary y-axis more difficult to configure and use. In the new version, it will return a 2-D array of display axes [[left axes, right axes]] to make it simpler to utilize.

HistogramDisplay is being renamed to DistributionDisplay to be more inclusive of the variety of visualization types that are housed there. Additionally there are changes to two of the plot names to be more consistent with the others.

Existing Function

New Function
HistogramDisplay.

plot_stacked_bar_graph
DistributionDisplay.

plot_stacked_bar
HistogramDisplay.

plot_stairstep_graph
DistributionDisplay.

plot_stairstep

Stamen maps for the GeoographicPlotDisplay are being retired. Those maps will no longer be availabe at the end of October 2023. The function was updated so that users can pass an image tile in.

QC#

  • The default behaviour for act.qc.qcfilter.datafilter is changing so that del_qc_var=False. Previously, the default was to delete the QC variable after applying the QC. Going forward it will not default to deleting the QC variables.

  • ARM DQR webservice is being upgraded and the corresponding function will be upgraded to utilize this new webservice.

Tests#

Test data that have been historically stored in the act/tests/data area will be moved to a separate repository in order to reduce the package install size.