Description
The PME-WRF Dust Forecast Viewer shows the following variables:
a) AOD@600nm - aerosol optical depth (AOD) at 600 nm. AOD is a measure of the extinction of the solar beam by dust and other aerosols. AOD is a dimensionless number and is related to the amount of dust and other aerosols in the vertical column of the atmosphere over the observation location. An AOD value of 0.01 normally reflects an extremely clean atmosphere but a value of 0.5 and up would correspond to very dusty conditions.
b) Dust-all - vertically integrated dust concentrations with a unit of µg/kg. The model outputs dust concentrations at every model level in five bins: 0.5 µm effective radius, 1.4 µm effective radius, 2.4 µm effective radius, 4.5 µm effective radius, and 8.0 µm effective radius. The variable Dust-all is the vertically integrated total dust concentrations of the five bins.
c) Dust-surface - dust concentrations at the lowest model level with a unit of µg/kg. The lowest model level corresponds approximately to 10 m height above the surface. The variable Dust-surface is also the sum of the five dust bins at the lowest model level.
Scripts
The Dust Forecast Viewer link runs a perl script wrapper around javascript that display images. This script /d2/www/cgi-bin/model/ ugui.chem reads the image directories in /d1/pmefdda/data/cycles/GWRFDUST/GFS_WCTRL/plots/ in order to get current available cycles. The javascript passes values to the animation script /d2/www/htdocs/projects/anim.chem.html to march through cycle times for a given image.
Under the /d1/pmefdda/data/cycles/GWRFDUST/GFS_WCTRL/plots/ directory, there are three perl script files, plot_AOD_600nm.pl, plot_DUST_all.pl, and plot_DUST_surface.pl, that call and execute three NCL files, plot_AOD_600nm.ncl, plot_DUST_all.ncl, and plot_DUST_surface.ncl for generating the images for AOD@600nm, Dust-all and Dust-surface. The so-generated images in JPEG format are stored under the subdirectories named after the cycles, for example, 2014032206 (06Z cycle on March 22, 2014). Currently, the images are not scrubbed.
Any changes about the images, for example, contour levels or color tables, should be made in the NCL files. The perl script files should not be modified unless there are changes in the model execution directories or model cycles. If the images are not generated or not complete, the first thing to check is to see if the model runs are completed. The next thing to check is the log files, AODlog_${cycle}.log for AOD@600nm, DUSTlog_${cycle}.log for Dust-all, and DUSTsurface_${cycle}.log for Dust-surface, located under the /d1/pmefdda/data/cycles/GWRFDUST/GFS_WCTRL/plots/ directory. These log files are not scrubbed.
The perl script files are executed immediately after the model runs are completed.