20051205: WRF output/IDV compatability

>From: Daniel Schaffer <address@hidden>
>Organization: NOAA
>Keywords: 200512052346.jB5Nkc7s014858

Hi Dan-

Sorry for the delay in responding.  We were at AGU this week.

>We are developing a portal that manages WRF runs 
>(see http://www.wrfportal.org)
>
>We are interested in adding some visualization capability to the
>portal so that after the user runs WRF, they can easily display model
>results.  IDV is attractive because it is 100% java so could 
>be pulled into the WRFPortal java code and be run on any machine
>without special compilation.  So we are thinking about
>pulling in some (although not necessarily all) of the IDV capability.
>
>A key issue is the capability for IDV to read files originally produced
>by WRF.  The WRF Post Working Group:
>
>http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~stoeling/wg6_main.html
>
>discusses this issue.  Mark Stoeling indicated that
>progress in making this capability happen stalled awhile back.

We have done some work to read in the WRF version 2 files. 
Our big sticking point is the staggered grids in the netCDF
files.  I noticed on the page above that there is a Vis5D
output.  We have not tried this, but the IDV can read most
Vis5D files.

>You'll note on the Working Group web-site that there has been
>success in making it possible for the GrADS display system to read
>grib files created out of WRF output files by interpolating vertically
>to standard NWS pressure levels and horizontally to to match
>with a Lambert Conformal grid and to "unstagger" from the Arakawa
>staggered grid.  
>
>Do you have any information about this and/or suggestions about
>how we might be able to restart efforts to provide an analogous
>"WRF to IDV" capability?

The IDV can now read GRIB files directly.  Do you have some
sample files that we can test with?

Don Murray
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