How to visualize vertical profiles from WRF in Matlab

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Back to the WRF-SFIRE user guide.

A vertical profile is a graph of an atmospheric variable, such as wind speed or temperature, as a function of height above the terrain, in a fixed horizontal location. Vertical profiles can be measured e.g. by soundings, sondes, or sensors on meteorological towers. Computation of a vertical profile from the state of an atmospheric model is useful for validation of simulations and as an observation function for data assimilation.

Prerequisites

Step by step direction

  • cd wrf-fire/WRFV3/test/em_fire and start Matlab from the command line: matlab &
  • Alternatively, change to the above directory from inside Matlab command window and run startup.
  • In Matlab,
    • type help vprofile for more information
    • change to directory with WRF NetCDF input or output files.
    • run the vprofile command

Examples

  • vprofile('wrfout_d01_0001-01-01_00:01:00',100,100,1) will generate the profile at location 100m north and 100m west of the south-east corner of the domain from the specified wrfout file at history step 1
  • vprofile('wrfinput_d01',100,100,[]) will generate the same profile from the WRF input file (this file is created by ideal.exe or real.exe).

WRF-profile-speed.jpg WRF-profile-direction.jpg

  • the vprofile script will also print to the terminal the information on the first few levels of the profile, such as
Wind profile at (300m 300m) from lower left corner of domain
Roughness height from LANDUSE 0.020m
layer altitude     U       V   speed  direction (degrees)
z0     0.020   0.000   0.000   0.000
reduced       -0.341  -1.506   1.544 -12.758
  1    1.007  -0.433  -2.503   2.540  -9.811
  2    3.071  -0.581  -2.975   3.032 -11.048
  3    5.236  -0.716  -3.288   3.365 -12.291
  4    7.506  -0.855  -3.600   3.701 -13.365
  5    9.888  -0.999  -3.924   4.049 -14.288

and

Wind height on fire mesh        0.248m
layer altitude        U       V   speed  direction (degrees)
z0     0.020   0.000   0.000   0.000
fwh   0.248   -0.276  -1.609   1.632  -9.734
  1    1.007  -0.433  -2.503   2.540  -9.811
  2    3.071  -0.581  -2.975   3.032 -11.048
  3    5.236  -0.716  -3.288   3.365 -12.291
  4    7.506  -0.855  -3.600   3.701 -13.365
  5    9.888  -0.999  -3.924   4.049 -14.288

See also

Works with