(1) Interactive dialogue box
After opening Metview, with right mouse click on the macro icon and then selecting the
Execute
option from the menu, a dialogue box pops up showing the possible settings:
(2) Batch mode
In batch mode the macro can be executed following the next syntax:
% metview -b macro option1 option2 option3 ...
where macro is the macro to be run (plot_IC.mv, plot_forecastrun.mv or plot_ERAI_ERA5.mv); option1, option2 etc. are the settings listed above. A detailed help together with some useful examples is provided with simple execution of the macro:
% metview -b macro
The shell script scr_run_macros executes the macros from the UNIX/Linux shell and it can be tailored for the own needs.
External functions and macros
The prepared Metview macros use some external functions, macros and colour definitions which are placed in the definitions directory.
File name
Description
build_layout_2plus1 : layout definition with 2 left panels and 1 right panel
build_layout_single : layout definition a single panel
titlemain : title style for the main plot
titlemain_2L : 2-line title style for the main plot
titlepanels : title style for the individual panels
legend_main : legend definition for a single page
legend_shade : legend definition for left panels
legend_diff : legend definition for right panel (for the difference field)
base_visdef : colour definitions for the different variables
diff_range : dynamic colour definitions for the difference fields
To reach these functions and colour definitions, the path of the definitions directory has to be added to the METVIEW_MACRO_PATH (e.g., in .bashrc).
Please note that there is an include statement in the plot_forecastrun.mv and the plot_ERAI_ERA5.mv macros and further 2 ones in the plot_IC.mv, taking the two colour definitions (base_visdef and diff_range) from this directory. The path of the definitions directory has to be set in the downloaded macros according to the local working tree (it is necessary because using dynamic path with include is not possible in the macro language).
Input data
The input data are requested with the following content, format and name convention:
- Macro plot_IC.mv expects the ICM* files as input: ICMGG${expID}INIT_${date}, ICMGG${expID}INIUA_${date}, ICMSH${expID}INIT_${date}, where
expID is the 4-digit experiment ID;
date is day in format yyyymmdd.
The files have to be placed in the ${INPUTDIR}/${expID} folder, where INPUTDIR is the input directory specified when calling the macro. - Macros plot_forecastrun.mv expects grib files as input with the following file names: ${variable}_${date}.grib, where
variable can be t2, mslp, p, gust, t850, q700, z500, u250, u100;
date is day in format yyyymmdd.
The files have to be placed in the ${INPUTDIR}/${expID} folder, where INPUTDIR is the input directory specified when calling the macro. - Macro plot_ERAI_ERA5.mv expects grib files as input with the following file names: ${referenceID}_${variable}_${period}.grib, where
referenceID is ei for ERA-Interim and ea for ERA5;
variable can be t2, mslp, p, gust, t850, q700, z500, u250, u100;
period is the investigated time period in format of yyyymmdd-yyyymmdd (e.g., 20151201-20151206 for Desmond).
The files have to be placed in the ${INPUTDIR}/reference folder, where INPUTDIR is the input directory specified when calling the macro.
Please note that the Metview macros expect only specifying ${INPUTDIR}/ as input directory without adding any further subdirectories (i.e, ${expID} or reference folders) into the command line.
Output figures
All the macros produce figures in single-page .ps files (see Figure 1) with the following file names:
- plot_IC.mv: ${variable}_${level}_ERAI-ERA5_${date}+${timestep}.ps, where
variable can be stl2, lnsp, z, t, cc, u, q;
level can be 0 (in case of surface variables) or from 1 to 91;
date is day in format yyyymmdd;
timestep is forecast lead time in hours, e.g., 0, 3, 6 etc. - plot_forecastrun.mv: ${variable}_${level}_${expID}_${date}+${timestep}.ps, where
variable can be t2, mslp, p, gust, t, q, z, u;
level can be 0 (in case of surface variables) or 850, 700, 500, 250, 100;
expID is the 4-digit experiment ID;
date is day in format yyyymmdd;
timestep is forecast lead time in hours in format hh, e.g., 00, 03, 06 etc. - plot_ERAI_ERA5.mv: ${variable}_${level}_${reference}_${date}${time}.ps, where
variable can be t2, mslp, p, gust, t, q, z, u;
level can be 0 (in case of surface variables) or 850, 700, 500, 250, 100;
reference can be ERAI or ERA5;
date is day in format yyyymmdd;
time is hour in format (h)h, e.g., 0, 3, 6, 9, 12 etc.
The .ps files can be transformed in raster format, e.g., into .png files using the convert command. (Please note that convert requires the ImageMagick software to be installed.) Setting the resolution to 120 DPI generates sharp images with limited file size:
% convert -density 120 psfile pngfile
Running the Metview macros results in a large number of figures. To have an overview on them, based on the .png files a catalogue can be prepared which contains all relevant plots for the selected variable and a given investigation aspect (e.g., to study the impact of resolution changes in the forecast) in a concise format (click below and see Figure 2 for illustration). To quickly generate such an album, 2 possibilities are provided for the users: (1) the Macro functionality of Microsoft Office Word and (2) HTML templates.
Figure 1: Exemplary output figure. Here: 3-hourly 10-meter wind gust (m/s) at 00 UTC on 5 December 2015 from the T255L91 OpenIFS forecasts initialized from ERA-Interim at 00 UTC on 4 December 2015. |