cherry-pick of commits from dev/emc to main

[bensonr]

Description
Bringing in PR #167 and PR #173 to the main branch

Fixes # (issue)
Tests will need to be run to ensure compilation and execution for manual CI and SHiELD functional tests

Checklist:

Please check all whether they apply or not

• My code follows the style guidelines of this project
• I have performed a self-review of my own code
• I have commented my code, particularly in hard-to-understand areas
• I have made corresponding changes to the documentation
• My changes generate no new warnings
• Any dependent changes have been merged and published in downstream modules

[kaiyuan-cheng]

It looks good to me. Thank you.

[MingjingTong-NOAA]

The merge looks good to me. I did a quick IAU test, and the merge passed the test.