The online training week aimed at providing webinars on specific topics related to software packages and applications used at ECMWF in the operational production and visualisation of numerical weather predictions. The objective was to provide updates on new features and to familiarise participants with the packages and applications.
ECMWF has supercomputer facilities to run operational activities (part of CPU allocation is available to Member and Co-operating States) and a Linux cluster, available exclusively to registered users from Member and Co-operating States which can be used for graphical or other pre- and post-processing.
ECMWF operates a large-scale data handling system, in which all ECMWF users can store and retrieve data needed to run their weather modelling activities and data mining.
ECMWF also provides software packages specifically developed to handle data and observations coding and decoding, visualisation, data manipulation and archiving and managing of workflows. A full list of software packages available can be found on our Software page.
Visualisation of ECMWF data
Monday 13 May 10:00 to 11:00 BST (9:00 to 10:00 UTC)
This webinar introduced software for visualising ECMWF data. Many different ways to extract visual information from data were demonstrated. Some of these related to choice of colour schemes and plotting algorithms, others involved some form of processing to be done as part of the visualisation. The webinar explored different map projections and how to combine multiple data layers onto a single map and how to combine multiple maps into a single plot.
Post-processing of ECMWF data
Tuesday 14 May 10:00 to 11:00 BST (9:00 to 10:00 UTC)
This webinar introduced software tools for processing data from ECMWF. Operations such as regridding, sub-area extraction and field filtering were covered, along with techniques for slicing data along different axes. Basic operations and more complex meteorological and thermodynamic functions were also explored. The webinar covered aspects of handling observational data.
MARS (Meteorological Archival and Retrieval System)
Thursday 16 May 10:00 to 11:00 BST (9:00 to 10:00 UTC)
This Webinar focused on how to retrieve data from ECMWF’s meteorological archive "MARS" efficiently and present the tools available to help users when retrieving large datasets. It also highlighted some features of MIR, the Meteorological Interpolation and Regridding library, which is now the default for those operations in MARS.
Additional resources:
MARS: ECMWF's meteorological archive
Compiling your programs on ECMWF computers
Friday 17 May 10:00 to 11:00 BST (9:00 to 10:00 UTC)
This webinar introduced the recommended strategies to build and run your programs at ECMWF, ranging from small post-processing tools on our ECGATE cluster to complex models on the High Performance Computing Facility. The session built on what had been taught on the following online module: