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WRF Official Repository – Weather Research and Forecasting

54 points by lemaudit 8y ago

fouc 8y ago
WRF is a state-of-the-art atmospheric modeling system designed for both meteorological research and numerical weather prediction. It offers a host of options for atmospheric processes and can run on a variety of computing platforms. WRF excels in a broad range of applications across scales ranging from tens of meters to thousands of kilometers, including the following. – Meteorological studies – Real-time NWP – Idealized simulations – Data assimilation – Earth system model coupling – Model training and educational support
- fouc 8y ago
  It doesn't seem to be a deeplearning/neural network model like I was half expecting ;)
  - ngmc 8y ago
    Nope, but you could probably integrate it with something like SciSpark. https://github.com/SciSpark/SciSpark https://github.com/SciSpark/SciSpark
segfaultbuserr 8y ago
I'm curious. I believe national-wide weather forecasting by computers was been done since the 1960s. As today's personal workstations are much more powerful than a supercomputer built in the 1990s, and the old models and numerical methods (not the state-of-art ones) are well-known (and have multiple open-source implementations), the calculation should be possible today on an ordinary workstation for educational purposes. But exactly what kind of data do I need to run my own weather forecast on my computer? Is it possible to calculate my personal 12-hour weather report based on public data published by NOAA, etc? Is there a tutorial for setting up a weather forecast?
- AllegedAlec 8y ago
  Disclaimer: not a meteorologist. > But what kind of data do I need to run my own weather forecast on my computer? I believe it's a combination of plain old measurements (wind direction + speed, temperature, humidity, etc etc), RADAR, and a lot of historic precedence. I don't know how much of that is open-sourced, but I think it'd be easier to hook onto the api of your national weather broadcasting websites and ask them what your weather will be for the next 12 hours.
  - omrjml 8y ago
    It may be possible, with a lot of work, to get the model up and running, but to get any type of accuracy out of the model, realtime data assimilation of observations is key and that is possibly even more complex. So I'll agree with the comment that it may be easier to just hook into a national weather service API. Of course, if you just want to learn about getting these models up and running then it's worth trying. (I work at a national met service developing these models.)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - segfaultbuserr 8y ago
    ofc it won't be reliable at all, especially compared to the national weather service. I meant doing it for educational purposes, for fun, not for profit, so I'm here to ask about the types of data needed and the availability of these data, etc, for running such forecast (not meant to use this specific model, I think it would be impressive to replicate how numerical weather forecasting was done in the 1970s on today's computer with real data).
  - angry_octet 8y ago
    Most of the data comes from satellite observation. The US does have a very high density of RADAR as well. Sounding balloons and fixed weather stations are the traditional inputs. There is no explicit historical data, though arguably it is present in the use of particular schemes (weather speak for: we tweaked these magic numbers in the model so it gave good forecasts). You can easily run WRF with the NOAA GFS as initial conditions, it would easily run on an iPhone computationally, but practically it will work on your desktop Linux box. http://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/supports/tutorial.html http://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/supports/tutorial.html They have a containerized version too, which will save much fiddling with compilers and libraries. https://github.com/NCAR/container-wrf/ https://github.com/NCAR/container-wrf/
fyfy18 8y ago
Some other comments mention that European models are more advanced in some respects. Are any of those open source?
- andrew42 8y ago
  No, the European model (ECMWF IFS) is not open source, and they don't even release most of the operational forecast data that they produce to the general public. As far as I know the UK and others don't either.

54 points by lemaudit 8y ago

fouc 8y ago

WRF is a state-of-the-art atmospheric modeling system designed for both meteorological research and numerical weather prediction. It offers a host of options for atmospheric processes and can run on a variety of computing platforms. WRF excels in a broad range of applications across scales ranging from tens of meters to thousands of kilometers, including the following. – Meteorological studies – Real-time NWP – Idealized simulations – Data assimilation – Earth system model coupling – Model training and educational support

fouc 8y ago
It doesn't seem to be a deeplearning/neural network model like I was half expecting ;)
- ngmc 8y ago
  Nope, but you could probably integrate it with something like SciSpark. https://github.com/SciSpark/SciSpark https://github.com/SciSpark/SciSpark

segfaultbuserr 8y ago

I'm curious. I believe national-wide weather forecasting by computers was been done since the 1960s. As today's personal workstations are much more powerful than a supercomputer built in the 1990s, and the old models and numerical methods (not the state-of-art ones) are well-known (and have multiple open-source implementations), the calculation should be possible today on an ordinary workstation for educational purposes. But exactly what kind of data do I need to run my own weather forecast on my computer? Is it possible to calculate my personal 12-hour weather report based on public data published by NOAA, etc? Is there a tutorial for setting up a weather forecast?

AllegedAlec 8y ago
Disclaimer: not a meteorologist. > But what kind of data do I need to run my own weather forecast on my computer? I believe it's a combination of plain old measurements (wind direction + speed, temperature, humidity, etc etc), RADAR, and a lot of historic precedence. I don't know how much of that is open-sourced, but I think it'd be easier to hook onto the api of your national weather broadcasting websites and ask them what your weather will be for the next 12 hours.
- omrjml 8y ago
  It may be possible, with a lot of work, to get the model up and running, but to get any type of accuracy out of the model, realtime data assimilation of observations is key and that is possibly even more complex. So I'll agree with the comment that it may be easier to just hook into a national weather service API. Of course, if you just want to learn about getting these models up and running then it's worth trying. (I work at a national met service developing these models.)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- segfaultbuserr 8y ago
  ofc it won't be reliable at all, especially compared to the national weather service. I meant doing it for educational purposes, for fun, not for profit, so I'm here to ask about the types of data needed and the availability of these data, etc, for running such forecast (not meant to use this specific model, I think it would be impressive to replicate how numerical weather forecasting was done in the 1970s on today's computer with real data).
- angry_octet 8y ago
  Most of the data comes from satellite observation. The US does have a very high density of RADAR as well. Sounding balloons and fixed weather stations are the traditional inputs. There is no explicit historical data, though arguably it is present in the use of particular schemes (weather speak for: we tweaked these magic numbers in the model so it gave good forecasts). You can easily run WRF with the NOAA GFS as initial conditions, it would easily run on an iPhone computationally, but practically it will work on your desktop Linux box. http://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/supports/tutorial.html http://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/supports/tutorial.html They have a containerized version too, which will save much fiddling with compilers and libraries. https://github.com/NCAR/container-wrf/ https://github.com/NCAR/container-wrf/

fyfy18 8y ago

Some other comments mention that European models are more advanced in some respects. Are any of those open source?

andrew42 8y ago
No, the European model (ECMWF IFS) is not open source, and they don't even release most of the operational forecast data that they produce to the general public. As far as I know the UK and others don't either.