Skew-T Virtual Sounding Plotter

About

A program to generate Skew-T meteorological data plots from GRIB files output by meteorological forecasting models, also known as a virtual sounding. It is intended for use as an easy-to-use educational tool by students or researchers.

The program uses the UCAR/Unidata NetCDF-Java library for GRIB file reading.

Currently it is able to read GRIB1 and GRIB2 files for certain models published on the NOAA NOMADS site.

Licensed under the 2-clause BSD license.

Features

• Read GRIB1 and GRIB2 files output by the NOAA RAP, NAM, and GFS forecasting models
• Generate high-quality Skew-T/Log-P plots from temperature and dew point data at various isobaric levels
• Convert relative humidity to dew point as needed
• Calculate values such as lifting condensation level (LCL), K-index, Total Totals, and SWEAT depending on data available
• Output high-resolution (approximately 328 DPI) plot to a PNG file

Supported model output files

• GFS (filenames containing .pgrb2.)
• RAP (filenames containing .awp130pgrbf)
• HRRR (filenames containing .wrfprsf)
• NAM (filenames containing .awphys)

Requirements

Important

It is recommended to use the latest 0.3.0 alpha version. Despite the "alpha" label, these versions now bundle the necessary Java runtime and they contain bug fixes for reading some model output files, as well as other fixes and enhancements.

Development is only targeting Windows for now.

Running

• Windows 10 or later

Double-click on "SkewTVSP.exe" inside installation folder.

Building

• Windows 10 or later
• OpenJDK 21
• OpenJFX 21 SDK
• Apache Maven 3
• 7-Zip (if creating archive for distribution)
• WiX v3 (if creating Windows installer)

Maven should pull in all required dependencies automatically. Simply run mvn clean compile package to build and mvn javafx:run to run.

To create a distribution, run .\create-dist.cmd, .\create-dist.cmd archive, or .\create-dist.cmd installer to create a folder, archive file, or installer, respectively.

Citing/Acknowledging

Citing or acknowledging Skew-T Virtual Sounding Plotter in works that use plots generated by it is not required; however, it is much appreciated.

BibTeX example:

@software{skewtvsp,
    author = {{Avery Donovan}},
    title = {Skew-T Virtual Sounding Plotter},
    url = {https://github.com/donovan1983/Skew-TVirtualSoundingPlotter},
    version = {0.3.0-alpha.4},
    year = {2024},
}

Text example:

Avery Donovan, (2024): Skew-T Virtual Sounding Plotter (SkewTVSP) version 0.3.0-alpha.4 [software].
(https://github.com/averydonovan/Skew-TVirtualSoundingPlotter)