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Info

Please note that VAPOR is not an ECMWF development. VAPOR is not distributed with Metview, but it has to be installed separately. Please visit the VAPOR website for installation instructions: https://www.vapor.ucar.edu.

How to set up the Metview Vapor interface?

To make this interface work Metview has to be started up with the MV_VAPOR_HOME environmental variable set the the location of the VAPOR installation.

VAPOR data files

VAPOR input data is described by .vdf (VAPOR data Format) files. These are XML files containing the name and dimension all the variables and the path of the actual data files storing the data values.  VAPOR stores its actual data values in .vdc (VAPOR Data Collection) files. These are NetCDF files containing wavelet compressed 3D data. There is a separate file for each variable and timestep organized into a folder hierarchy.

The input data must be defined on  a 3D grid,  which has to be regular horizontally. Vertically the grid can be:

  • equidistant (regular)
  • layered. For layered grids the elevation above sea level of each layer should be available as a variable called ELEVATION. VAPOR can then use it to interpolate all the data to height levels internally. 
  • spherical

VAPOR uses a right-handed coordinate system which means that :

  • the horizontal grid has to start at the SW corner
  • the vertical coordinates have to increase along the z axis (upwards).

part of the

VAPOR stands for Visualization and Analysis Platform for Ocean, Atmosphere, and Solar Researchers. It is a software system providing an interactive 3D visualization environment that runs on most UNIX ,Windows and Mac systems equipped with modern 3D graphics cards. The home of the software is https://www.vapor.ucar.edu :

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Once the data has been converted just right-click Visualise the VAPOR Prepare icon to start up VAPOR with the newly created dataset

 

VAPOR data files

VAPOR input data is described by .vdf (VAPOR data Format) files. These are XML files containing the name and dimension all the variables and the path of the actual data files storing the data values.  VAPOR stores its actual data values in .vdc (VAPOR Data Collection) files. These are NetCDF files containing wavelet compressed 3D data. There is a separate file for each variable and timestep organized into a folder hierarchy.

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