What are WRF and WPS?

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model is a mesocale numerical weather prediction framework designed for operational forecasting and atmospheric research needs. WPS stands for WRF Preprocessing System and is used to prepare a domain (region of the Earth) for WRF.

Program Features

• Run ensembles. Must select external workflow manager (WFM) in Portal Wizard, then "ensemble-ize" namelist variables and environment variables on the ensemble tab in your workflow.
• Generate html reports from your runs
• Includes WRF Domain Wizard for selecting your domain on a map, defining nests, creating namelist.input, running WPS programs
• Portal Wizard walks you through the steps of configuring computers, tasks, and running WPS/WRF
• Visualize NetCDF and GRIB output files with a plethora of graphing/charting options
• Define worklows (tasks to run, associated namelist files, environment variables)
• Run workflows
• Monitor workflow runs (monitor the progress, error messages, log files)
• Diff Tool (quickly see the differences between one workflow/namelists and another, can also diff text files)
• Remembers your preferences (e.g. automatically fills in default information for new workflows/runs)
• Can either use your local computer file system, or use SSH-2 to connect to remote computers
• Easily search past workflows based on multiple criteria
• Eliminates the need to create and maintain complicated directory trees and configuration files (since the information is stored in the database)
• Can be run on one computer (e.g. Windows, Mac, Linux) while it fires off workflows on another computer (that has WRF installed)
• Cancel (halt) runs in progress
• Supports both cores: ARW and NMM
• Supports WRF version 2.x and the new WRF version 3.2

Program Requirements

• Java 5 or later
• 675 MB of free RAM
• 1024 x 768 or better display
• WRF/WPS installed on some computer accessible by WRF Portal. This computer must also have Ruby installed in order to run the default WPS/WRF scripts (note: Ruby is standard on most Linux/Mac systems).

WRF Portal is an Earth System Research Laboratory funded project.

Links

WRF Model
WRF Model Users Page
WRF User's Forum
DTC
WPS
WPS Guide/Installation
WRFSI GUI Domain Tool
ECMWF pres. in .ppt format
DRAMM (WRF install for Mac)