Need help to transpose bundles to user area.

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Haime
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Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2020 1:21 pm

Need help to transpose bundles to user area.

Post by Haime »

I was at the AMS 2020 and met a representative of the SSEC and he was showing
the MCIDASV.
i brought it software to my office and showed it to the meteorologists that
needed a tool for forecasting.
They want to learn more about it.
is there some way you can provide the name and contact information of the
representative?

We would like to transpose some of the bundles to our region (Curacao) using
the GFS model.

I was just informed the representative name is Bob.
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Haime
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2020 1:21 pm

Re: Need help to transpose bundles to user area.

Post by Haime »

Basically to start i would like to take the Bundle on https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/mcidas/softwa ... ies/model/

this bundle:
mci 1.PNG

Translate it to this area :
N20 S8 E-55 W-78
Model data should be GFS.
If i get the steps i can try to do that for the other bundles.

Haime
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bobc
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Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2010 5:57 pm

Re: Need help to transpose bundles to user area.

Post by bobc »

Hello, Haime. This is Bob from AMS. I'm glad you're looking more into McIDAS-V! Those bundles on the page that you linked to unfortunately can't simply be changed to over your specified domain. This is because the bundles use NAM data over the Continental United States (CONUS), so there is no data over your area. To get these bundles over your domain, I think you'll need to manually create them using either a global model or a regional model that covers your area.

I created a video where you can see my monitor as I display absolute vorticity, geopotential heights, and wind vectors at 500hPa at two different timesteps in the top two panels. You should be able to follow this procedure to populate all 4 panels with different timesteps. When creating this video, I noticed that the Spacial Subset tab of the Properties window of the GFS global data took a little fiddling around with to get the longitude values correct, but it's still pretty easy to use.

See the video here: 4 Panel 500hPa

Essentially, the steps were:
  1. Load in the most recent GFS global 1 degree forecast data.
  2. Modify the spacial subset of the data source so the data is only over your specified domain. If you don't need the exact domain, you can simply draw a box in the Region tab when displaying the data.
  3. Create a 4-panel map display.
  4. With panel 1 selected in the Main Display, I displayed absolute vorticity at 500hPa and changed the contour interval to 1.
  5. I overlaid this with geopotential heights at 500hPa and adjusted the contour interval to display more contours.
  6. I overlaid this with wind vectors at 500hPa and changed their color to white.
  7. I selected panel 2 in the Main Display and repeated steps 4, 5, and 6 above.
  8. I saved a bundle, removed all layers and data sources, and loaded the bundle I saved in the previous step.

Please note that the User's Guide has extensive documentation on how to work with gridded data (as well as other data types). The User's Guide also covers changing enhancements, adjusting contours, and saving/loading bundles. For more assistance, the McIDAS-V Documentation page has several tutorials, including a Gridded Data tutorial, which walks you through step-by-step working with different 2D and 3D grids.

Hopefully this is enough to get you started.

Thanks,
Bob Carp
McIDAS User Services
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Haime
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Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2020 1:21 pm

Re: Need help to transpose bundles to user area.

Post by Haime »

Dear Bob, thanks for your detailed response!!!
i am going to use those steps now.

When i am done with those iw ould like to create views for netcdf satellite imagery. either pull them for external sources or internal.
Also osing our Radar data for overlaying on products.
One product that got a lot of ittention from our forecasters is the 3d product viewed on your page.
Can that acomplished with the GFS data also?

Regards Haime.
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Haime
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Re: Need help to transpose bundles to user area.

Post by Haime »

Oh i forgot something!!!!
How do i get the GFS datainto this system, can i get a link?
What about the NOMADS data is that the same?

Haime
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bobc
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Re: Need help to transpose bundles to user area.

Post by bobc »

Hello,

As for getting GFS data, if you go to the Gridded Data > Remote chooser we have a default catalog that has several models, including GFS. You can get at GFS global data by selecting:

Realtime Data > NCEP Model Data > Global Forecast System (GFS) > GFS One Degree - Global Coverage > GFS One Degree Forecast > Latest

You can get data off NOMADS as well and the files can be loaded through the General > Files/Directories chooser as a gridded data source. This is likely the way you would load your satellite data as well. If you are using GOES-16 data in its native netCDF format and you are on a macOS or Linux machine you can create a local ADDE dataset to access it. We also have freely-available data servers in the Satellite > Imagery chooser that allows you to access realtime GOES-16/17 level 1b and level 2 data.

For radar, we have freely available realtime data you can access through the Radar > Level II and Level III choosers. The radar sites are mostly over the United States, though. If you have your own local files you can try loading them through the General > Files/Directories chooser. We've seen in the past that some radar files from countries outside of the United States don't follow standard conventions and therefore can't be loaded, so I can't make any promises there.

Yes, 3D displays are possible and quite easy to create in McIDAS-V. In the below video, I created a 2D display of GFS mean sea level pressure and then added an "isosurface display" of wind speed at 25 m/s over your domain. This isosurface display displays a surface of data anywhere in the domain where a 25 m/s speed exists. I then added a vertical cross section of wind speed. I only worked with levels between 1000 and 100hPa.

Video here: 3D Example

Again, all of this is explained further in the User's Guide and tutorials that I linked previously.

Bob
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Haime
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Re: Need help to transpose bundles to user area.

Post by Haime »

Thanks, again.

Haime
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Haime
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2020 1:21 pm

Re: Need help to transpose bundles to user area.

Post by Haime »

Dear Bob,
We are moving forward with good speed.
Where can i get station plots for the caribbean area?
And also Bouy data. (Wave height data for example)
One more thing for rainfall prediction what type data/source can i use for my region?

What are the possibilties for Mcidas-V to produce an image (png), movie(avi or mp4)?
What are the possibilties for Mcidas-V to automate (scheduled task) a production of display?


Thanks for your support.

Haime
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bobc
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Re: Need help to transpose bundles to user area.

Post by bobc »

Hello,

I'm glad that you're making progress.

RE: Station and buoy plots over the Caribbean:
If you go to the Point>Plot/Contour chooser, you can connect to adde.ucar.edu/RTPTSRC. Using the Point Type dropdown, select "RTPTSRC". This is hourly METAR data over the entire globe. You can subset a region in the Region tab of the Field Selector before creating the display. You can find bouy data by choosing the SHIPBUOY Point Type. I took a glance at the data in the SHIPBUOY dataset and I'm not seeing wave height. I'd suggest looking online for another source of this data. Even if you found something in CSV or text format you can load it through the General>Files/Directories chooser. You can create a gridded display of point data, or you can create a Point Data Plot display, which will plot individual data points. You can find more about these controls in the Point Data Plot Controls page of the User's Guide. There is also a Point Data tutorial on the documentation page I linked to earlier that covers many different things you can do with point data in McIDAS-V.

Re: Rainfall prediction
Using the method in the 4-panel video I posted earlier, you can select "GFS > GFS Quarter Degree Forecast > Latest". Once you add this data source, in the Field Selector, under "2D > Forecast Radar Imagery" you'll see a field you can plot. This is the highest resolution GFS data over your domain, at 1/4 degree resolution. This seems to be a little under 30km resolution when plotted in the Main Display. There may be other global or regional models over your domain that we just don't have listed in McIDAS-V. If you are aware of any, and they're either CF-complaint netCDF or GRIB (grb1 or grb2) you should be able to load them in as a gridded data source through the General>Files/Directories chooser.

Re: Capturing images or animations
After displaying data, you can go to View>Capture and choose either Image or Movie. For Image, you can choose PNG or other common types including GIF or JPG. For movie, you can choose GIF or MOV. See more on the Image and Movie Capture Controls page of the User's Guide.

Re: Scheduling tasks
I'd suggest you investigate Polling, which is described on the Data Sources page of the User's Guide. Polling is a setting that's applied individually to data sources. For example, say you loaded in and displayed a loop of the 5 most recent GOES-16 band 13 images centered over your domain. You could set the GOES-16 data source to update every 10 minutes. This means at 10-minute intervals, McIDAS-V will check to see if any new images are available. If they are, they'll be loaded in and your display will be updated to show the 5 most recent images.
We recently had another user ask about scheduling things to run from the background in a script, where every x-number of minutes a script would run to display a loop of data and create an animation. If this sounds interesting to you, you can see this forum post. If you investigate scripting further, many of the functions are documented in the User's Guide and there are a couple scripting tutorials available online.

Thanks,
Bob
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Haime
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Re: Need help to transpose bundles to user area.

Post by Haime »

Thanks Bop for your answers!
for scripting i was refering to cpoling data and creating movies/images in the background.
I will check the forum on this matter.

HAIME
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