WRF-ARW Online Tutorial

[Whatheway]

Good evening,

I wanted to start the discussion on updating the WRF-ARW Online Tutorial. https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/OnLineTutorial/index.php

As you can see it is a little dated when it comes to the processing applications.

It recommends ARWpost and RIP4 which, if memory serves me right, has discontinued support within the last couple of years.

Since WRF-Python, NCL, and Model Evaluation Tools are the preferred method of of doing analysis shouldn't the tutorial reflect that?

Thoughts?

 

[kwerner]

Hi,
That is a good point. Unfortunately our current predicament is that NCL is also no longer supported, and the entire group that developed/supported WRF-Python has dissolved. I believe there are plans to continue with its development, though, and hopefully we will get some more information about that in the near future. NCL is still a powerful tool, but the issue is that it's nearly impossible to build from scratch, and all of the pre-compiled binaries are outdated. As for MET, it is currently supported, though it's supported by a different group (DTC lab at NCAR), and it is better for statistical analysis, as opposed to basic plotting. ARWpost and RIP are technically still supported, but again, both are pretty outdated (and since RIP requires the NCARG libraries, the same issue occurs - with an outdated binary, if users have newer versions of GNU). I agree this is an issue that needs to be figured out, and that the online tutorial could use some updating. All of our documentation needs updating! We are trying to get on track, but are currently very short on resources right now.

 

[Whatheway]

Thanks for the explanation.

I just wanted to start the conversation here in the forum. I figure it had something to do with limited resources.