MHKiT v0.8.0

We're excited to announce the release of MHKiT v0.8.0, which brings a host of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes across various modules, ensuring compatibility with Python 3.10 and 3.11, and introducing full xarray support for more flexible data handling. Significant updates in the Wave and DOLfYN modules improve functionality and extend capabilities.

Python 3.10 & 3.11 Support

MHKiT now supports python 3.10 and 3.11. Support for 3.12 will follow in the next minor update.

• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/240

Wave Module

Enhancements:

Automatic Threshold Calculation for Peaks-Over-Threshold: We've introduced a new feature that automatically calculates the "best" threshold for identifying significant wave events. This method, originally developed by Neary, V. S., et al. in their 2020 study, has now been translated from Matlab to Python, enhancing our existing peaks-over-threshold functionality.

Wave Heights Analysis: A new function, wave_heights, has been added to extract the heights of individual waves from a time series. This function uses zero up-crossing analysis to accurately measure wave heights, improving upon our previous methods which only provided the maximum value between up-crossings.

Enhanced Zero Crossing Analysis: Building on the above, the zero crossing code previously embedded in global_peaks has been isolated into a helper function. This modular approach not only refines the codebase but also supports new functionalities such as calculating wave heights, zero crossing periods, and identifying crests.

Bug Fixes:

Contour Sampling Error in Wave Contours: A bug identified in mhkit.wave.contours.samples_contour has been resolved. The issue occurred when period samples defined using the maximum period resulted in values outside the interpolation range of the contour data. This was corrected by ensuring that all sampling points are within the interpolation range and adjusting the contour data selection process accordingly.

• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/268
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/252
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/278

Xarray Support

MHKiT functions now fully support the use of xarray for passing and returning data.

• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/279
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/282
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/285
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/302
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/310

DOLfYN

Thanks to the many user contributions and users of MHKiT the DOLFYN module include a significant number of enhancements and bug fixes.

Enhancements:

Altimeter Support: Enhanced the Nortek Signature Reader to add capability for reading ADCP dual profile configurations.

Data Handling Improvements: Introduced logic to skip messy header data that can accumulate during measurements collected via Nortek software on PCs and Macs.

Instrument Noise Subtraction: Added a function to subtract instrument noise from turbulence intensity estimation using RMS calculations, providing results that differ by approximately 1% from the existing standard deviation-based "I" property.

Improved File Handling: Updates for RDI files to handle changing "number of cells" and variable "cell sizes," which are now bin-averaged into the largest cell size.

Bug Fixes:

Power Spectra Calculation: Fixed a bug where a given noise value was not being subtracted from the power spectra, and noise was inadvertently added as an input to dissipation rate calculations.

Improved Header Handling: Allowed RDI reader to skip junk headers effectively.

Nortek Reader C Types Update: Adjusted C types in the Nortek reader to handle below-zero water temperatures and to allow pitch and roll values to go negative.

• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/280
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/289
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/290
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/292
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/293
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/294
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/299

River & Tidal: D3D

Added limits to variable_interpolation and added 3 array input capability to create_points

• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/271

Developer Experience

Black formatting

Black formatting is now enforced on all MHKiT files. This ensures consistent formatting across the MHKiT package.

• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/281

Linting & Type Hints

MHKiT is in the process of enforcing pylint and adding type hints to all functions. Currently this has been achieved and is enforced in the Loads and Power modules.

• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/288
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/296

CI/CD

This release introduces significant reduction in testing time for development. This is achieved by reducing the number of tests for pulls against the develop branch and only running hindcast test when changes are made to it. A bug in the hindcast CI was fixed which only ran on changes to the hindcast tests instead of the hindcast module. Additionally the wave and wind hindcast needed to be separated in 2 jobs due to the excessive time taken to run a wind cache. This created a number of follow on PRs around solidifying the logic of these job. A special case for Python 3.8, pip, and Mac OS was added to use homebrew to install NetCDF and HDF5 to get tests to pass.

• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/241
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/270
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/306
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/311
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/317
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/318
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/319
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/320
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/324

Clean Up

MHKiT fixed an implementation error where functions used assert instead of built in errors for type and value checking. Additionally these PRs removed unused files, fixed typos, and created an argument which allows users to run CDIP API calls silently.

• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/276
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/272
• https://github.com/MHKiT-Software/MHKiT-Python/pull/273