MeteOS - Meteorological Operating System v1.0 User's Guide Welcome to the wonderful world of the weather forecasting. Now you have a very user-friendly package for running of WRF model under Windows (soon for Apple OS X and Linux). WRF is the future of the mesoscale numerical weather prediction. To run MeteOS, you need VMware Player or VMware Workstation. Find it on http://www.vmware.com. The Player is freeware, but it doesn't support multiprocessor/multicore hardware. VMware Workstation provide option to access the virtual Linux hard disk from your Windows, so you can copy files between the both operating systems. There is a new tool - VMware Server, it's freeware/opensource, and support multi-cpu-core hardware. When you type the username and the password, you will see the KDE - the desktop of the virtual Linux. Click on the icon "MeteOS", the program will load. Note, that on slow hardware, it will take hours to make the forecast, be sure that you have equal to or faster than 2 GHz, recommended dual/quad core hardware. The software will run and on slower processors, 512 MB is a good RAM minimum. 256 for the virtual machine and 256 for the host operating system. Click on main menu "WRF->Configure domain". Wait few seconds and the WRFSI will load, with this tool we will configure the area of the WRF forecast - Europe, US, Hawaii, the choice is your, the Earth is in your hand. Click on "Domain Selection", click on "Choose Mode->Load exsisting domain", click on "domain", don't delete the default domain, you can use only it, click on "Next" button at the bottom, scroll down if you doesn't see it. Click on "Grid & Projection values", change your Centerpoint Longitude and Centerpoint Latitude for your location (i.e. where you are now). Click "Update map", click "Next" button, again "Next", again "Next", you will see button "Localize", click it, wait few minutes, exit from the WRFSI: "File->Exit", answer "Yes" and "Yes" to both questions. In the MeteOS GUI, select Inital and boundary conditions: GFS, NAM, or RUC. "GFS 0.5 deg, small files" means that you will use Global Forecast System for the initialization of WRF, 0.5 degree means better grid resolution, better quality of the final forecast, small means data from NOMADS server, not reliable, but really small files, like 1 MB per forecast hour. Big files means data from NCEP, NWS, but big one, like 35 MB per one file, so if you want to run 6 hour forecast with 6 hours Boundary Conditions frequency, then you need around 70 MB to download. "Initial hour" is the interval between the current time and the time from when you will run the model. Setting to 24 will run WRF from tomorrow, not from now. "Boundary conditions freq." - this is the interval of the boundary conditions, 24 will give bad forecast, 03 is the maximum for GFS, 01 is available for NAM, 24 means less data to download, 03 more data. "Forecast length" is the duration of the WRF forecast, up to 120 hours (5 days). "Auto running of WRF" - sorry, currently N/A (bug). In the "Physics" tab you can change the physics of the model, more work is needed here, you can change the physics, but there is chance to crash the model, the default is good for now, later you can play with them. For more information check /meteos/process/wrf2/wrf/runs/domain/config/wrf_run/run_physics.conf. "Upload" tab is for uploading of the weather maps to ftp server, the automatic uploading doesn't function, sorry, will be fixed in the next version. Before to run the model, save the configuration: "WRF->Save configuration" and click on "Run WRF". Now it's time for a long coffee break, the model will download data and will run for your area. It will take some time, so just leave the PC to work, you can check the logs - click on "Log" button. If you see "tail -f /meteos/process/wrf2/wrf/runs/domain/log....", this means that the WRF is computing the forecast (the data is already downloaded). If you have slower compuer this will take from half hour to few hours. If you see in the logs "We are outta like Vladimir" (a funny message from RIP package:-), then the maps are created, or are ready for displaying. Look at main manu: "Analyze->Surface->Temperature". The map will appear and you can Play/Stop/Forward/Rewind it using the buttons on left. To get sounding, just input the WMO/ICAO ID in the "Souning" tab, and click "Plot sounding", it will take a minute to create the Skew-T/Log(P). "Forecast" tab is to get text forecast for any given location (WMO/ICAO/ or "latitude, longitude"). TFG will do it. Well, sometimes it will give you funny messages, when I have time, I will improve it. If you need some new map, check the RIP guide: /meteos/process/rip4/Doc/ and also the file: /meteos/bin/rip.sh Additional notes: SMP is not enabled in the current Linux virtual machine, so multi-cores can't be used for now. Tip: if the uploading doesn't work, try "/" for "Remote dir". Now go to simulate some hurricane or twister! Please send me screenshots of exciting weather events. (c) 2007 Angel Dimitrov |