WRFx system

WRFx: Requirements and environment

Install Anaconda distribution

Download and install the Python 3 conda distribution for your platform. We recommend an installation into the users' home directory. For example,

wget https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh
chmod +x Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh
./Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh

The installation may instruct you to exit and log in again.

On a shared system, you may have a system-wide Python distribution with conda already installed, perhaps as a module, try module avail.

Install necessary packages

The currently preferred process is to have conda find the versions for you:

conda create -n wrfx python=3.8
conda activate wrfx
conda install -c conda-forge gdal
conda install -c conda-forge netcdf4 h5py pyhdf pygrib f90nml lxml simplekml pytz pandas scipy
conda install -c conda-forge basemap paramiko dill psutil flask wgrib2
pip install MesoPy python-cmr shapely==2

On Linux x86-64, you can also use versions specified in a yml file:

 wget https://demo.openwfm.org/web/wrfx/wrfx.yml
 conda env create --name wrfx --file wrfx.yml

Note: The versions listed in the yml file may not be available on platforms other than Linux x86-64 (most common), or may just not work as package repositories evolve.

Set environment

Every time before using WRFx, make the packages available by

conda activate wrfx

WRFx: wrfxpy

WRF-SFIRE forecasting and data assimilation in python using an HPC environment.

wrfxpy: Installation

Clone github repository

Clone wrfxpy repository

git clone https://github.com/openwfm/wrfxpy

Change to the directory where the wrfxpy repository has been created

cd wrfxpy

General configuration

An etc/conf.json file must be created with the keys discussed below. A template file etc/conf.json.initial is provided as a starting point.

cd wrfxpy
cp etc/conf.json.initial etc/conf.json

Configure the queuing system, system directories, WPS/WRF-SFIRE locations, and workspace locations by editing the following keys in etc/conf.json:

"sys_install_path": "/path/to/wrfxpy"
"wget" : "/path/to/wget"

Note that the rest of the paths are not used by FMDA, so you can leave defaults or remove them. To find the default wget,

which wget

Tokens configuration

When running wrfxpy, sometimes the data needs to be accessed and downloaded using a specific token created for the user. For instance, in the case of running the Fuel Moisture Model, one needs a token from a valid MesoWest user to download data automatically. All of these can be specified with the creation of the file etc/tokens.json from the template etc/tokens.json.initial containing:

{
  "mesowest" : "token-from-synopticdata.com"
}

So, if any of the previous capabilities are required, create a token from the specific page, do

cp etc/tokens.json.initial etc/tokens.json

and edit the file to include your previously created token.

For running the fuel moisture model, a new MesoWest user can be created in MesoWest New User. Then, the token can be acquired and replaced in the etc/tokens.json file. Also, the user can specify a list of tokens to use.