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What is ODB?

ODB is a database developed at ECMWF to store and retrieve large volumes of meteorological observational and feedback data efficiently for use within the IFS.

Currently, ODB comes in two flavours:

  • ODB-1 (the original hierarchical table format capable of running in a parallel environment within IFS)

  • ODB-2 (a new flat format with a modern API used for archiving in MARS).

The home of the software is ODB.

ODB/SQL

Data from an ODB can be extracted using the ODB/SQL query language.

How do I use Metview with ODB?

Metview automatically recognizes both ODB-1 and ODB-2 databases and assigns the very same icon to them in the user interface:

Running the examine command on this icon brings up the ODB examiner to inspect the meta-data and data it contains.

ODB data can be directly visualised in various plot types via the ODB Visualiser icon

or if only an ODB/SQL query needs to be run

data using various plot types. Optionally it can perform an ODB/SQL query on the input ODB and visualises the resulting (intermediate) data. It works for both databases (ODB-1) and files (ODB-2).

From Macro/Python the icon can be called as odb_visualiser().

A tutorial about using ODB in Metview can be found here.

What is ODB?


FLEXPART is a Lagrangian particle dispersion model developed and used by a scientific community. It can be driven by meteorological input data from a variety of global and regional models including ECMWF analyses and forecasts.

The home of the software is https://www.flexpart.eu/.

What Metview version do I need for FLEXPART?

The minimum Metview version to use is 5.0.

How to use FLEXPART with Metview?

Metview provides a high level interface to prepare input data for FLEXPART from ECMWF's MARS archive (via the FLEXPART Prepare icon),

perform a FLEXPART simulation (via the FLEXPART Run icon)

and visualise the resulting output files. For the visualisation the gridded outputs in FLEXPART's custom binary format are converted to GRIB (click here for details).

Tutorial

There is a tutorial available on the use of FLEXPART with Metview explaining both the basics of the FLEXPART simulations and the related visualisation techniques. The snapshots below showcase a few of the FLEXPART plot types that can be generated with Metview:

What FLEXPART version is supported in Metview?

Please note that the Metview interface was written for version 9.02 of FLEXPART.

FLEXPART at ECMWF

FLEXPART is installed at ECMWF to be directly used from within Metview. You can find out more about it here.

FLEXPART outside ECMWF

Details about setting up the Metview FLEXPART interface outside ECMWF can be accessed here.

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