The ODB interface

What is ODB?

ODB (Observation DataBase) 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).

Data from ODB can be extracted using the ODB/SQL query language, which is generally a small subset of SQL with some useful extensions.

The home of the ODB software can be found here.

How to use Metview with ODB?

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

The meta-data and data contents of an ODB can be inspected with the ODB Examiner, which can be either started up from user interface (right-click examine on the icon) or from the command line using the following command:

There are two more Metview icons associated with ODB: the ODB Filter icon

that can perform an ODB/SQL query resulting in a new ODB and the ODB Visualiser icon

with which ODB data can be visualised (and optionally filtered) in various plot types.

Tutorial

There is a tutorial available on the use of ODB 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:

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?

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?

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.