[Wrf-users] Visualization in Matlab

Hein Zelle hein.zelle at bmtargoss.com
Wed Jul 22 01:38:36 MDT 2009


Roberto Chavez wrote:

> Has anyone written code to use MATLAB to view WRF-ARW output?

Plenty, but it's not generic code.  I tend to prefer to visualize WRF
output with the Ferret tool (PMEL/NOAA), which is not standard within
the WRF community.

For Matlab, look into the Mexnc/NetCDF toolbox for reading WRF output
files.  This is completely generic and not WRF specific, read the
NetCDF documentation if you're not familiar with the file format.

For simple visualization the 'imagesc' command performs quite well,
combined with the quiver command to draw wind vectors.

To draw proper maps you'll need to make use of the XLAT and XLONG
coordinate fields, I use the griddata function to interpolate from WRF
"curved grids" to regular lat/lon grids.  I've also reversed the
process (interpolating the coordinate fields) to plot WRF data as a
rectangle, with a lat/lon graticule overlaid on the plot and proper
lat/lon coordinates along the axis.  Both methods are fairly
cumbersome in MATLAB.

For coastlines we make use of the GSHHS dataset (freely available)
for which we've written a custom reading routine.  There are plenty of
alternatives there too.

Note that MATLAB also has a mapping toolbox, which may provide many of
these features.  I don't have it and have no experience with it, so I
can't say if it's worth trying.

Kind regards,
     Hein Zelle


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Dr. ir. Hein Zelle
Advisor Meteorology & Oceanography

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