no general updates

obs:

- space weather ioda converters (from open madrigal database)
- mtgirs preparation work on converters, CRTM and RTTOV
- new polygon-area filter
- improvements to duplicate check filter
- improvements to fortran string comparison
- improvements to solar zenith, azimuth checks
- interest in deprecating vertinterplay operator -- but further discussion needed

space weather:

- coordinate meeting
- request for jedi-waccm-x repo
- updates to pathsum operator
- improved tests of pyiri-jedi hofx, localization

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