no general updates

obs:

IODA converter:
- Add sequence number to Madrigal sTEC and vTEC converters #1740; general bug fixes #1742
- JCSDA has met with UKMO, NOAA EMC and GSL, NASA regarding preparation for MTG-IRS and reviewed next steps and IODA conventions.  

UFO:
- Geographical polygon filter #3977. Thanks NOAA (Sam Trahan). The documentation for this filter PR974 in jedi-docs needs review
- The duplicate check filter was using an ncDiag variable now fixed with PR3972 . Documentation needs review  PR980
- Add check for solar zenith and azimuth angle #3973: 
- Add a check for  solar zenith and azimuth angles in high frequency GMI channels.
- Change variable in Duplicate Check ObsFunction #3972
- Change PreUseFlag to use parameter variable name and add new parameters.

Tech Debt reduction:
- compare strings fortran removed as intrinsic: #3986
- check on `nGood` variable to avoid nonsense entries: #3987
- fix FORTRAN line continuation: #3990 

Plan to discuss (1) the request about the phasing out AtmVertInterpLay (2) debt reduction in next OBSPROC meeting Feb 24. 

space weather:

- IODA converters (mentioned above)
- vTEC refactor PR merged UFO #1740
- Pathsum H(x) test in pyIRI pyiri-jedi ##145 
- Update ObsErrorPyiri to allow localization #141
- Eliminate fill values from heights returned from horizontal interpolator #148
- Request for creating waccm-x-jedi repo 
- Also met with UKMO, NRL, SWARD(NASA/CU), HAO regarding the JEDI-space weather development and coordination

crtm:

- Working on CRTM version 3.2: created a version 3.1.3 release spack-stack to be able to have IFX support, this is not intended to be a commonly used release, but really more for spack-stack
- Working on visible transmittance coefficient for ABI GOES 19, obs team is testing currently.
- We have received updated MTG-IRS coefficient from NOAA STAR.
- We have also received updated  AMSR3 coefficient as well. 
- I'm working on restoring or adding missing Jacobians from the land surface, ice surface and snow surface models.  This is all in support of v3.2.0.

infra:

- CI image revision for spack-stack 2.0 
  - NCEP spectral transform “sp” library removed - has been deprecated and replaced with NCEP “ip” general interpolation library..
  - GSIBec removed from the image CI configures jedi bundle wiht BUILD_GSIBEC=ON
  - For unit tests needing gsibec, do this https://github.com/JCSDA-internal/saber/pull/1191
  - Note: gsibec 1.2.1 still requires sp (although can build without it but will not work fully) we need to update to 1.2.3 to get a version that works with ip.
  - See spack stack issue spack-stack/issues/1648
- spack-stack 2.1
  - Target feature freeze tomorrow.

interfaces:

- prepping OSDF container for testing by partners
  - adding new ctests to improve coverage
  - implementing a writer to enable end-to-end workflows
  - thanks UKMO for contributing OSDF append/reduce capability
  - UKMO working on ODB reader for OSDF, will reach out to EMC soon for bufr reader

algo:

- PR (from Anna Shlyaeva) introduced a hybrid block chain which refactors the hybrid covariance in SABER into a more elegant, less hacky format. New yaml key will be needed when using a SABER hybrid covariance. Ricardo and I discovered this the hard way.
- Ensemble management in block chains was also refactored, possibly with some improvement to memory usage.
- Big extensions on the way for adding scale-dependent background error covariances on the way