NCL operationally

Hi all,
 
We are currently benchmarking NCL against MetView (from ECMWF). The goal
would be to use NCL operationally to produce plots of our model output.
Most of these products are produced in time-critical mode.
 
Currently, there seem to be two bottlenecks that are slowing NCL down
considerably as compared to MetView. The first is the reading of our
model output in grib1 format. After offline conversion using
ncl_convert2nc to NetCDF format and execution of the same script simply
reading a couple of fields from a couple of files, the script runs 10x
faster. The second is the generation of raster graphics using NCL. A lot
of our plots are disseminated in PNG or GIF format. MetView can directly
write these formats whereas NCL writes a PS or PDF and the raster format
is produced using the "convert" utility.
 
1) I would be very much interested in future plans for NCL concerning
these two points.
 
2) Would a generation of NCGM and conversion using ctrans to a raster
format bring any gain in performance?
 
Thanks and kind regards,
Oliver

________________________________________

Oliver Fuhrer
Numerical Models

Federal Departement of Home Affairs FDHA
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss

Kraehbuehlstrasse 58, P.O. Box 514, CH-8044 Zurich, Switzerland

Tel. +41 44 256 93 59
Fax +41 44 256 92 78
oliver.fuhrer_at_meteoswiss.ch
www.meteoswiss.ch - First-hand information
 

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Received on Mon Jan 19 2009 - 08:08:52 MST