Add NCAR channel

[HoWol76]

Abhik asks whether we can add geocat to the conda environment.

These packages are not available on conda or conda-forge. We would have to add the channel 'ncar' to the list.

Should we do this?

Holger, Aidan, and Claire approve.

[ScottWales]

looking at https://anaconda.org/NCAR/repo I've no particular concerns, the number of packages they provide is limited. we probably don't need the datafiles package. It does look to need an older version of numpy (1.19), current version in unstable is 1.20.2

[aidanheerdegen]

Ordering is important. We would want the ncar channel after the coecms and conda-forge I guess, so we only pick up packages from there that are not provided in the other two channels.

[aidanheerdegen]

What is the status of this @HoWol76 ? I can see someone else who has created their own environment and installed geocat, so perhaps this is something we do need to support.

[ccarouge]

Jatin's student was using PyNGL (not developed anymore, incompatible with python >3.8) #51 and this has been replaced by geocat. I think we should add NCAR channel?
Ticket

[aidanheerdegen]

I guess ask if they want to use geocat as a replacement for PyNGL. The other user I referred to didn't need geocat as it turns out, so don't install based on my enquiry.

[ccarouge]

Finally, Jatin and his student won't use GeoCAT. So still no need for the NCAR channel