Future of OpenAltimetry visualization integration

[JessicaS11]

Hello everyone! With the recent transition of OpenAltimetry to NSIDC came a few breaking changes to the programmatic API. As a result, portions of the icepyx.visualization.request_OA_data() function would need to be rewritten to parse the new data format and fix icepyx.query.visualize_elevation() (which stopped working in Oct 2023 during the migration, see #454). I'm starting this discussion here to get some insight on how many users rely on the visualize_elevation() functionality and solicit volunteer(s) to make these updates. The changes would primarily be a matter of updating the data parsing (currently done using Pandas and numpy arrays); these efforts were started in the oa_api branch of the icepyx repository but are outside what I will have developer time to complete. Alternatively, we could explore the ideas of sunsetting/revamping the icepyx visualization module in favor of direct use of OpenAltimetry (for quick data visualization) or a cloud-based approach based on the existing read+xarray plotting capabilities.

@icetianli @friedrichknuth I'm especially interested in hearing your thoughts since we have you to thank for this great module!

If you currently rely on icepyx.query.visualize_elevation() for your workflow, please let us know!