NCL announcements


11 November 2020

GeoCAT Team's open letter to the community about NCAR's commitment to NCL, developments in the GeoCAT team, Project Pythia, as well as PyNGL and The GeoCAT Examples Gallery:November 2020 Update.


28 February 2019

NCL version 6.6.2 is now available. (Versions 6.6.0/1 were not officially released due to some internal bugs.) For more information, see "What's new in the current release".


6 February 2019

NCAR has made the decision to adopt Python as the scripting language platform of choice for future development of analysis and visualization tools. Please read this open letter to NCL users to understand what kind of impact this will have on the future of NCL.


16 July 2018

NCL version 6.5.0 is now available. For more information, see "What's new in the current release".


22 December 2017

NCAR's Yellowstone system will be decommissioned on December 31, 2017. See the Using NCL in the Cheyenne environment document for details on submitting NCL jobs on NCAR's new high-performance computer.


28 February 2017

NCL version 6.4.0 is now available. For more information, see "What's new in the current release".

Be sure to also check out the new NCL User Guide, written by Karin Meier-Fleischer and Michael Böttinger of DKRZ (Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum).


10 November 2016

We've scheduled two workshops at NCAR for 2017. For full details, see our workshop page.


17 April 2015

On April 18, 2015 the NCAR / CISL Data Center will be shut down for its semi-annual maintenance power-down. This activity may cause some services, like downloading NCL from the Earth System Grid, to not be available. See the CISL daily bulletin for more details.


18 March 2015

NCL version 6.3.0 is now available. For more information, see "What's new in the current release".


4 November 2014

The first ever quick reference card for NCL is now available.


2 September 2014

NCL version 6.2.1 is now available. For more information, see "What's new in the current release".


19 August 2014

We hosted two webinars today on an "Introduction to NCL".
More webinars will likely be held sometime August 26-28, 2014.


2 April 2014

NCL version 6.2.0 is now available. For more information, see "What's new in the current release".


21 February 2014

There's a new document on how to run NCL on NCAR Yellowstone environment.


18 February 2014

We hosted an "NCL and Shapefiles" webinar on February 13, recorded an "NCL Website Tour" presentation on February 14. Both are available online, with plans for more in the near future. See NCL Webinars for more information.


24 January 2014

The NCL team is interested in offering a set of web-based seminars (webinars) on various topics. These webinars can be attended live, and will be archived so you can view them later.

To provide your input on what topics you'd like to see covered, fill out this 11-question survey.

The first webinar is tentatively scheduled for February 13. Stay tuned for details.


29 May 2013

Guilherme Martins of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais in Brazil contributed a tutorial PDF document on NCL in Portugese: Tutorial sobre o NCAR Command Language.


7 February 2013

A couple of days after V6.1.1 was released, a few users reported bug that warranted a V6.1.2 release immediately.

NCL version 6.1.2 is now available. For more information, see "What's new in the current release".


4 February 2013

NCL version 6.1.1 is now available.


21 December 2012

We will be releasing NCL version 6.1.1 in January 2013 to fix a number of bugs, including those in the new NetCDF-4 reader. See the "Known issues with version 6.1.0" section for more information.


6 November 2012

The NCL workshops for 2013 are now open for registration. Limited travel funds are available for students from universities in EPSCoR states or minority-serving institutions. For more information, go to the workshops page.


28 October 2012

The official release of NCL version 6.1.0 is now available.


9 July 2012

The beta release of ParNCL is coming soon. ParNCL is part of ParVis, a DOE-funded, 3-year, multi-agency project led by Argonne National Laboratory to develop a suite of parallel tools for analyzing ultra-large climate datasets.


28 May 2012

The official release of NCL version 6.1.0-beta is now available.


11 April 2012

In a new NCAR initiative to promote transparent and easy access to scientific resources, NCL has been assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). DOIs are persistent identifiers for web-based resources. The NCL DOI, when used in URL form, http://dx.doi.org/10.5065/D6WD3XH5, provides a persistent link to the NCL web page. The benefit of DOIs is that they are widely accepted by academic publishers as citable locators for scholarly objects.

Please cite NCL in your publications using the following citation (line breaks were added for clarification but the citation should be on one line):

  The NCAR Command Language (Version 6.0.0) [Software]. (2012). 
  Boulder, Colorado: UCAR/NCAR/CISL/VETS. http://dx.doi.org/10.5065/D6WD3XH5

You will need to update the NCL version and year as appropriate.

For more information about DOIs, see http://www.doi.org and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier.


05 December 2011

Mateus da Silva Teixeira of the Universidade Federal de Pelotas, (Pelotas, Brazil) contributed an introductory PDF document on NCL in Portugese: Introdução ao NCAR Command Language (NCL), com aplicações em Meteorologia.

Other contributors:

  • Vanúcia Schumacher Pogorzelski, Meteorology student, Faculdade de Meteorologia, UFPel, Brazil
  • Stefane Fonseca Freitas, Meteorology student, Faculdade de Meteorologia, UFPel, Brazil
  • Carina Klug Padilha Reinke, Meteorologista, Centro de Pesquisas e Previsões Meteorológicas, Faculdade de Meteorologia, UFPel, Brazil

02 November 2011

We are pleased to announce the NCL workshops for 2012, being held in Boulder, Colorado. We will also be continuing the RSVP program, which provides travel support to eligible students and faculty members.


10 June 2011

There will be an NCL workshop held at the University of Wyoming (in Laramie) August 16-19, 2011. For more information, visit our workshops page.


30 May 2011

The official release of NCL version 6.0.0 is now available.


2 March 2011

There's a new release (6.0.0-beta) of NCL available.


25 October 2010

We are pleased to announce the NCL workshops for 2011, being held in Boulder, Colorado. We will also be continuing the RSVP program which provides travel support to eligible students. For more information, visit NCL Workshops page.


26 July 2010

There's a new release (5.2.1) of NCL available.


14 April 2010

There's a new release (5.2.0) of NCL available.


7 Apr 2010

On Saturday, April 10th, 2010 the NCAR / CISL Data Center will be shut down to facilitate preventative maintenance on all infrastructure support systems. This is the normal spring season down time for this purpose. Please note this activity is a complete shut down, scheduled for 0600h MDT Sat 10 April 2010 until 1800h MDT Sat 10 April 2010.

Some computing systems, depending on their function, will begin their shutdown Friday afternoon / evening and the supercomputer systems will begin their shut down at 0001 (one minute after midnight) 4/10/2010.

This will affect anybody who needs to download NCL, PyNIO, or PyNGL from the ESG website, or visit the www.ncl.ucar.edu or www.pyngl.ucar.edu websites, so please make arrangements accordingly.


1 Apr 2010

Version 5.2.0-beta is available for testing. Version 5.2.0 will be released in mid April.


24 Feb 2010

NCAR is offering travel support for students from minority-serving institutions in the United States (MSIs) to attend the NCL workshop, July 20-23, 2010.

There are a limited number of slots available, so sign up soon. Student applications and instructions are available at:

http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/rsvp/


5 Dec 2009

There are two NCL workshops scheduled for 2010 in Boulder, Colorado:

  • January 26-29, 2010
  • July 20-23, 2010

Go to the NCL workshop page for more information and a registration link.


28 Sep 2009

Using NCL with VAPOR to visualize WRF data


[Click on image to enlarge]

As a result of a collaboration between the NCL and VAPOR teams at NCAR, users can now display NCL plots of WRF output in 3D, combined with satellite images, political boundaries and other images from Web mapping services. There's a short tutorial to help users use this feature.

We would like to hear user feedback: Is this feature useful? Is it easy enough to use? Is the documentation OK? Please send your comments to ncl-talk.


21 Sep 2009

The old NCL web site has been removed. The http://archive.ncl.ucar.edu/ URL will no longer work.


27 Jul 2009

We're excited to announce a new design for the NCL website!

Some new features that we think you'll like are:

  • Cleaner look.
  • Pull-down menus allow quicker access to sub pages.
  • Better organization of the navigation bars.
  • More useful information on main page (announcements, upcoming release, workshops).

The structure of the new web site should be almost identical to the previous web site, so most bookmarks should still work.

Many thanks go to Adam Phillips of NCAR/CGD, who provides scientific and programming support for both NCL and the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM). He designed this web site in his spare time.

The previous NCL web site is still available, should you wish to compare. It will stay up until the end of August: http://archive.ncl.ucar.edu/

We are interested in getting your feedback.

You can send comments to Adam and Mary. If you want to start a dialog on ncl-talk, that's fine too. Please be respectful of the amount of email that goes through this list, and not overwhelm it with minor issues.


16 June 2009

There's a new release (5.1.1) of NCL available.


4 March 2009

There's a new release (5.1.0) of NCL available.

2 January 2008

A free NCL workshop will offered in FY2008 to a qualifying UCAR member university. The deadline to apply is January 25, 2008.


8 November 2007

We've added a new email list, ncl-install@ucar.edu, for users to ask questions pertaining to installing, building, or setting up an environment to use NCL.


6 November 2007

There's a new release (5.0.0) of NCL out. This version is now available in binary and source code, and includes NCAR Graphics as well!


10 August 2007

Release of version 4.3.1.


1 Jul 2007

A 3D plot applications page was added to show how some low-level routines can be called from NCL to generate 3D scatter, surface, and isosurface plots.


23 May 2007

A TIGGE project applications page was added to show how NCL could be used to handle and display the TIGGE project data.


1 May 2007

Release of version 4.3.0.


26 September 2006

Release of version 4.2.0.a034.


23 January 2006

Release of version 4.2.0.a033.


17 January 2006

The free NCL workshops are back on! For more information, go to:
http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/Training/Workshops/


23 March 2005

Welcome to our new NCL web site. The new site combines the best of the CCSM support web site and the former NCL web site. Please send your suggestions to the webmaster.


11 February 2005

The NCL binaries are now being housed on the Earth System Grid website. Please see the download section for more information.