Re: NCL operationally

You might consider using the "experimental" PNG driver to make PNG
files directly from NCL:

   http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/FAQ/#o_formats_003

I made some hi-rez PNG plots over a North America subset. The
quality seems better than with convert. You can check out some demo
plots and the script here:

   http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/dave.allured/data/ncl/png/

The only drawback so far is that the PNG driver is slow. For a 3000
x 3000 pixel PNG, and grid size 321 x 161, the run time increased by
about 50 seconds.

Dave Allured
CU/CIRES Climate Diagnostics Center (CDC)
http://cires.colorado.edu/science/centers/cdc/
NOAA/ESRL/PSD, Climate Analysis Branch (CAB)
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/

Oliver.Fuhrer_at_meteoswiss.ch wrote:
> 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
_______________________________________________
ncl-talk mailing list
List instructions, subscriber options, unsubscribe:
http://mailman.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/ncl-talk
Received on Mon Jan 19 2009 - 15:39:36 MST