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What Metview version is required?
Metview versions 5.0.0. or later are required.
What FLEXPART version is required?
Only version 902 is supported.
Please note that FLEXPART is not an ECMWF development. FLEXPART is not distributed with Metview, but it has to be installed separately. Please visit the FLEXPART website for installation instructions: https://www.flexpart.eu/.
Compilation
Metview can only be compatible with FLEXPART if the size of the fortran record marker in the unformatted FLEXPART output is set to 4 bytes. Modern fortran compilers has a option to guarantee it. E.g. for gfortran:
-frecord-marker=4
Code modifications
To make FLEXPART work with ECMWF data the following modifications has to be made in the source code:
Resolve type mismatch in err.f90 with newer gfortran compiler: see flextra ticket49
This involves the modification in err.f90 of line 106 and 111
and line 140 and 145 as well.
Make FLEXPART work for 137 model levels
In par_mod.f90 line 125 has to be modified:
FLEXPART paths
The location of the FLEXPART executable and that of some other files/directories have to be specified for Metview. These locations can be defined either through a set of Metview environment variables or via parameters in the FLEXPART Run icon (these latter take precedence). The table below summarises what actually is needed to set for Metview.
| Description | How to get it/them | Metview environment variable | Flexpart Run parameter |
|---|---|---|---|
| The FLEXPART executable | Need to be built from FLEXPART source | MV_FLEXPART_EXE_PATH | User Exe Path |
The directory containing the following files:
| These files are distributed in the FLEXPART source inside folder option | MV_FLEXPART_RESOURCES_PATH | User Resources Path |
| The directory containing the species | A set of species are distributed in the FLEXPART source inside folder option/SPECIES | MV_FLEXPART_SPECIES_PATH | User Species Path |
To see the actual values of the Metview environment variables run metview with the -h flag:
metview -h
This will dump all the Metview environment variable to the stdout.