planetWRF

Ncview MarsWRF verification info and results from the benchmark simulation

Ncview is an open source, general netcdf viewer for examining any netcdf data file, so it allows you to explore your results without needing to buy any software licenses or learn any programming languages.

By following the short ‘tutorial’ below you can learn how to explore MarsWRF output using ncview.

If you ran the default Mars simulation (exactly as described in the users guide) then you can use ncview to compare your results with ours, and make sure it ran correctly. The plots shown below the tutorial are some snapshots of the u, T, Ps and CO2 fields at certain points during the run, as well as the name of the wrfout file, the time and the level selected in ncview to produce each of them.

Short tutorial for new users of ncview:

NOTE: in ncview, when you are done with a particular plot or pop-up menu, be sure to click “Close” or “Okay” – clicking the “X” at the top right of any box will end your ncview session entirely!

  1. Open the wrfout file with ncview by typing:  ncview wrfout_d01_0001-00001_00:00:00 &
  2. Select a variable to view – let’s try ‘MU’, the perturbation column mass: click on the box labeled “(26)3d vars” and find the drop option “MU”. Note that 3D variables generally means 2D in space (lon-lat) plus time, and 4D variables generally means 3D in space (lon-lat-vertical level) plus time
  3. You may want to resize the figure that pops up: click on the box labeled “M X5″ several times to increase the magnifcation
  4. You can advance the time shown: click on the box with a black border for the “Current:” value of the dimension “Time”.  Keep clicking and you will advance frame-by-frame. Note that the first output of the first file will be zeros, so you won’t see anything until you’ve advanced in time!
  5. You can also advance time by clicking the ‘play’ or ‘fast forward’ (then ‘pause’) buttons near the top of the GUI screen.
  6. If you want to see a line plot of the time evolution of one specific (lat,lon) location: click at a point on the 2D map of MU
  7. If you want to view a different field, then choose one – let’s try ‘U’: click on the box labeled “(10)4d vars” and find the drop option “U”
  8. By default the initial view is of (lat,lon) for the lowest model level.  You can still advance time in the same way as before (clicking the “Current:” value of the “Time” dimension).  You can now also change the level shown by:  clicking the “Current:” value of the “bottom_top” dimension.
  9. If you would prefer to change what axes are shown, then: click on the box labeled “Axes” and for the “Y Dim” select “bottom_top” and for the “X Dim” select “south_north”
  10. If you want to change the color scale shown: click on the button labeled “3gauss” to toggle between several colormap options
  11. If you want to change the range of the color scale shown: click on the button labeled “Range” to pop an X window with self-explanatory options.  Alternatively: to quickly force the colorbar range to precisely cover the range of values currently shown, just right click the box labeled “Range”.
  12. When you are done: click the button labeled “Quit”

MarsWRF verification plots using ncview:

Note that all plots were made using the 3dgauss color scheme.

Open the first wrfout file in ncview using: ncview wrfout_d01_0001-00001_00:00:00 &

Select 4D variable U and click on the ‘time’ box under “Current” to advance to the output time ’1′.

Right click on “Range” and you should see a plot of lowest level winds looking like this:

Use the ‘fast forward’, ‘pause’ and ‘play’ buttons to advance to frame 100/400 (shown near the top left of the GUI screen).

Right click on “Range” again and you should see a plot of lowest level winds looking like this:

Click on the ‘bottom_top’ box under “Current”to advance to level 20.

Right click on “Range” again and you should see a plot of level 20 winds looking like this:

Change the 4D variable to T.

Right click on “Range” again and you should see a plot of level 20 perturbation potential temperature looking like this:

Change the 4D variable back to U.

Click on “Axes” and change the Y Dim to ‘bottom_top’ and the X dim to ‘south_north’. Click OK.

Right click on “Range” again and you should see a lat-level plot of zonal winds looking like this:

Quit the ncview session.

The next 6 plots show the 3D variable CO2ICE for the first output time of the second to final wrfout files (wrfout_d01_0001-00101_00:00:00 to wrfout_d01_0001-00601_00:00:00).

Each time I leftclicked on “Range” and set the Minimum to ’0′ and the Maximum to ’1400′ before grabbing the plot.

The final 6 plots show lat-height plots of the 4D variable U for the first output time of the second to final wrfout files.

Each time I used “Axes” to change the Y Dim to ‘bottom_top’ and the X Dim to ‘south_north’, and I leftclicked on “Range” and set the Minimum to ‘-250′ and the Maximum to ’250′ before grabbing the plot.

<<  Back to “PlanetWRFv3 Users Guide”