Bug-fixes: WRF and GOES

• It is now mandatory to use THM as the Temperature variable (type_t) in the WRF model_nml #728
• Removed the offset in the GOES observation converter #731
  Please be aware that when using RTTOV with DART you should confirm that the channels listed in the coefficient file match the channel in the obs_seq.out
  For more detail refer to the obs_def_rttov documentation

MOM6 mask bug-fix

• Fix for MOM6 CESM3 workhorse 2/3 degree grid TL319_t232 to mask missing geolon|lat|u|v|t values

MARBL_column

Interface for MARBL_column for DART:

• state estimation
• state and parameter estimation
• parameter estimation only

BATS observation converter, and BATS climatology scripting.

contributed by Robin Armstrong

Bugfix:

• Fix for IO for NetCDF files when only some variables have the unlimited dimension #614

Bug fixes for shortest_time_between_assimilations and get_close_init

Bug fixes:

• Prevent hang by erroring out if shortest_time_between_assimilations <=0 #535
• Catch and error out if max_dist or max_dist_list is <=0 for 3d sphere 3d cartesian get_close_init #626
• Improved defaults for template model input.nml #493

Doc fixes:

• Removed out-of-date info about inflation flavor character strings #694
• Remove out-of-date info on qceff branch checkout #710
• GitHub template for reporting documentation issues #693

KQCEF

KQCEF: A Quantile-Conserving Ensemble Filter Based on Kernel-Density Estimation

• New distribution module kde_distribution_mod.
• New module rootfinding_mod that provides a different implementation of inv_cdf.

For further details see "A Quantile-Conserving Ensemble Filter Based on Kernel-Density Estimation"
by Grooms & Riedel (Remote Sensing, 2024; DOI:10.3390/rs16132377)

Contributed by Ian Grooms

WRF fwd operator bug fixes

• Bug fix for surface temperature observations to use QTY_2M_TEMPERATURE in wrf model_mod #700
• Bug fix for conversion of vapor mixing ratio to specific humidity in wrf model_mod #700
• Bug fix for diagnostics_obs.csh #660
• Improved documentation for WRF model_mod and WRF-DART Tutorial #700

Build tools for DART library

• Build tools for compiling DART as a shared or a static library.
  Based on work by Anh Pham and Suman Shekhar as part of their SiParCS 2024 projects.
• Bugfix: correct order of arguments in count_state_ens_copies for 'input' stages_to_write. #613

Bgrid documentation and scripting fix

• Updated Bgrid documentation and removed outdated scripts and files
• Fixed obs_diag rank histogram documentation links
• Improved inflation file documentation
• GitHub action for running all quickbuilds in DART

WRF v4

• WRF-DART and WRF-DART Tutorial updated to WRFv4. For detail on the differences see #661.
  Note, this change is not backwards compatible with WRFv3.9. If you are working with WRFv3.9 and DART
  and are affected by this change, please reach out to the DART team at [email protected].

• local particle filter default value for pf_enkf_hybrid=.false. contributed by Jon Poterjoy #680.

Bug-fix: WRF hybrid vertical coordinate

• DART now detects whether WRF is using Hybrid Vertical Coordinate (HVC) introduced in WRFv3.9 or terrain following (TF) system. This fix is also compatible with pre WRFv3.9 versions which did not include explicit attribute information for vertical coordinate system. #649
• Improved obs_impact_tool documentation. #571
• citation NCAR -> NSF NCAR #584