Introduction

Features

The program grib2v5d converts the content of a grib file into a file that can be viewed with Vis5d, a popular program for 3-D visualisation of meteorological fields. The vertical level types supported on input are sigma, eta (Mesinger), hybrid sigma/pressure (LM type only), height and pressure. The fields can be interpolated, on output, at height levels (interpolation to pressure levels may be added in the future), or can be kept at the same levels as in input (this is especially useful for viewing data at model levels without the filter of interpolation). The horizontal grid should be regular lon/lat, either rotated or not; no horizontal interpolation is made since Vis5d supports directly this type of grid. Optional vertical profiles at specified coordinate in ASCII formatted file can be produced. The program is mainly written in fortran 90 and is derived from a previous version made by Paolo Patruno at ARPA-SMR; it makes use of a Fortran77 library for managing access to grib files, a C library for reading and decoding grib and a C subroutine (modified from the one provided with Vis5d) for writing topography files. The program has been developed in the framework of the COSMO (Consortium for Small scale MOdelling) project (http://www.cosmo-model.org) which includes, among its participants, German, Greek, Italian and Swiss meteorological Services.

Future improvements

Use of DWD routines for accessing grib files. Automatic creation of a namelist from a given grib file. Support for stereographic grids. Support for different vertical coordinates. Porting to Cray. Possibility to display model topography instead of Vis5d internal topography (already done but not working).