This package is ment to help in establishing a common radiosonde output format. During the EUREC4A/ATOMIC campaign many radiosondes will be launched and an unique fileformat incl. unique variables names will hopefully help the community.
Currently, this package contains scripts to convert and visualize sonde data in the BUFR format to netCDF files.
Simply run sounding_converter -i your_sounding.bfr after the installation. During the first execution you will be asked to give meta-information which will be included in the output files.
These include e.g. contact_person and platform name which are probably helpful after the exchange of these files with other scientists.
The package can be installed with conda (Miniconda or Anaconda):
The best option is to create a new environment to not run into dependency problems with pre-installed package:
conda create --name field_campaignActivate the new environment with
conda activate field_campaignor
source activate field_campaignThe actual package can than be installed with
conda install -c observingclouds -c conda-forge eurec4a_sndDuring the first execution, the meta_information.ini configuration file has to be created. The user is prompted some questions on the command line before the file will be written to the users home directory.
It is also possible to copy the config/meta_information_template.ini to one's favorite folder and change the files content accordingly. If the file is not renamed meta_information.ini and is in the home directory, the option -c has to be used during the call of sounding_converter otherwise it will not recognize the configuration.
sounding_converter -i your_sounding.bfr -c /your/path/to/meta_information.iniPlease check for updates at the beginning of the campaign by running
conda install -c observingclouds -c conda-forge eurec4a_sndThe meta-information which is used in the netCDF files and in order to create a resonable filename, can always be changed by either
- remove the file
meta_information.iniin$HOMEand runsounding_converteragain, as if it would be your first execution - edit the file
~/meta_information.inidirectly
The converted dat files are netCDF files which conform to the CF-Conventions as far as possible and make use of the discrete sampling geometry. The sounding data can therefore easily be drawn as trajectories without extra efforts. One example is the software Panoply
The package also includes a few plotting routines that can be called with e.g.
sounding_visualize -n converted/file/sounding.ncA skewT diagram can be created with
sounding_skewT -i converted/file/sounding.ncFurther examples on how to create a skewT diagram can be found in eurec4a_snd/examples/visualizing. Have a look at Skew-T examples
Examples of the input .bfr files and the converted .nc file can be found in examples/data.
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specific module could not be found
Windows users might get the above error message when trying to visualize the soundings. The error is caused in pillow. Unfortunately there is not a very good solution yet, but the following might work for you:
conda remove --force pillow
pip install pillow
Commands `sounding_convert` and `sounding_visualize` cannot be found!
It seems something went wrong with the installation via `conda`. Although it is recommended to install this package via anaconda because it comes with the benefit that all dependencies should be resolved, you can also download this git repository and run within the `eurec4a_snd` folder:
python L1_rs41.py -i your_sounding.bfror for quicklooks
python make_quicklooks_rs41.py -n converted/file/sounding.nc
Slow internet connection: Download failed
In case of a slow internet connection, the command `conda install some_package` might fail due to connection timeout. In this case it might be a good option to download the failing package manually.
In this case the eurec4a_snd package for OSX is downloaded and installed manually:
wget -c https://anaconda.org/observingClouds/eurec4a_snd/v0.0.41/download/osx-64/eurec4a_snd-v0.0.41-py37_0.tar.bz2
The path needs to be adapted depending on the operating system and the version that should be downloaded. You may actually see the path you need to download in the error message of conda install eurec4a_snd.
The installation follows simply with
conda install -c observingClouds eurec4a_snd-v0.0.41-py37_0.tar.bz2