GeoCAT: The NCL Pivot to Python

In 2019 the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) announced an important change that will impact users of the Earth Sciences data analysis and visualization package, the NCAR Command Language (NCL). Based on numerous factors NCAR has decided to transition away from future NCL development and instead focus efforts on providing Open Source tools within the Python ecosystem. This talk will address the future of NCL and present the latest information on NCAR's development of the Geoscience Community Analysis Toolkit (GeoCAT). We will address what this change means for current and future users of NCAR's open source tools, and will discuss how the community can get involved with this exciting new effort!