<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><div>Dear Antonio,</div>Thank you for this thoughtful email about the meteogram content! Please see comments inline…<div><br><div><div>On Jan 21, 2015, at 4:45 AM, Bonan Antonino <<a href="mailto:abonan@arpa.veneto.it">abonan@arpa.veneto.it</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">
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<div><font size="2" face="Arial">This work on meteograms is very useful.
We adapted the available script (retrieved from grads functions
library) for our operational aims, since a long time, to get visual ideas
about weather forecasts from models. We use ECMWF data.</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial">So, just to get a better and fast visual forecast
from thise kind of model output, we are left with (successful?)
trials problems to solve.</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial">Our plots of temperatures at 2 m not only
contains the values at definite time steps (every 6 hours), together with dew
point values... but also minimal and maximal temperatures of the (6-hourly)
period ending at each step. The right visualization can
let forecasters understand the plot without big efforts. We find that the
shading by Jennifer is beautiful, but not so useful.</font></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I think the horizontal color blocks in the 2m temperature panel help the user get a quick impression of whether the temps are warm or cold without having to look closely at any numbers, but I can appreciate that there’s a lot of ink being added without any new information. </div><div><br></div><div>Here are my proposed changes:</div><div>1. Softer colors, with a few more levels including one exactly at freezing temperature, plus a noticable change from purple to blue at the freezing line. </div><div>2. 2m temperature in a solid dark line without cmarks, dew point in a dashed line of the same color. </div><div>3. Use of ‘gxout errbar’ to show the min/max range over the past 6hrs</div><div><br></div><div><img height="77" width="872" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" apple-inline="yes" id="35288D73-CC72-4303-B373-E100A7A16C65" src="cid:89A8F368-ADB2-4F01-B5CF-58B807EC4660"></div><div><br></div><div><img height="79" width="872" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" apple-inline="yes" id="C73670FE-0272-40E3-9B36-DA285783260C" src="cid:ECBA374C-FDC8-41A0-A3C0-8A18EAE12180"></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div style="WORD-WRAP: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space" bgcolor="#ffffff">
<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Plots of precipitation still have the problem of
scaling, making different meteograms so difficult to compare…</font></div></div></blockquote>I have added a “Run Total” at the upper right corner of the precip panel, which is the total accumulation over the 10-day period. Perhaps this will help in comparing meteograms. There is no way a fixed precip scale will work for the wide range of values that exist in meteograms from different locations. Small changes and small values would be impossible to detect. I am not going to alter the dynamically-generated ‘vrange’ values in the precip panel. </div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="WORD-WRAP: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space" bgcolor="#ffffff">
<div><font face="Arial" size="2">The directions of wind in the upper plot can be
badly understood by some forecasters, e.g. confusing between southerly and
upward wind. Obviously, this is a problem with their hurry and not properly with
the plots…</font></div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div style="WORD-WRAP: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space" bgcolor="#ffffff"><div><font size="2" face="Arial">The upper plot has another more serious problem.
Contour lines "come back in time" when (e.g.) an inversion layer is temporary.
You can see that in the plot showed by Jennifer, let's say in the afternoon of
20JAN. As you can think, reality cannot be a freezing point which starts from
the afternoon, lifts in the evening, go back to the same afternoon, get a time
folding, then lowers in the same evening... It'just a graphical artifice,
used by grads in its trial to plot a line being continuous in time/level
surfaces. It is more difficult to avoid a wrong intepretation by forecasters, as
they look for weather evolutions in meteograms: they could avoid the problem,
only by looking for single snapshots... time step by time step. That is, they
should abandon the comprehensive point of view of a meteogram!</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial">I feel this problem could be faced with a new
particular grads function: to get reliable plots in time/level surfaces,
stopping contour lines when they "come back in time". I feel a script cannot be
enough for such a purpose: at least, it would be too complicated.</font></div></div></blockquote><div>I agree that the wind barbs in the top panel are tricky to interpret. They are meant to be soundings, but it is easy to forget and think of them as a spatial wind field, or showing sinking/rising motion. That is why I wish there was more space in between each one, perhaps drawing them every 6 hours instead of every 3… </div><div><br></div><div>The temperature and humidity contours are meant to give a feel for air mass changes. I think the green blobs of moist air in the top panel connect visually to the cloud and precip panels in the bottom panels and provide good visual anchors as you look for vertical alignment of meteorological events in the time series. I agree that contours are a bit misleading because of the implied continuity, and it would probably be better to have a grfill instead, but then it would be impossible to have temp, humidity, and wind all in the same panel. </div><div>—Jennifer</div><div><br></div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="WORD-WRAP: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space" bgcolor="#ffffff">
<div><font size="2" face="Arial">Thank you for you work and good
luck....</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial"></font><font size="2" face="Arial"></font><font size="2" face="Arial"></font><font size="2" face="Arial"></font><br>Dr. Antonino Claudio
Bonan<br>Meteorologo<br>ARPAV- Servizio Meteorologico<br>via Marconi,
55<br>35037 Teolo (PD) - Italy</div>
<div>----- Original Message ----- </div>
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<div style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><b>From:</b>
<a title="jma@cola.iges.org" href="mailto:jma@cola.iges.org">Jennifer Adams</a>
</div>
<div style="FONT: 10pt arial"><b>To:</b> <a title="gradsusr@gradsusr.org" href="mailto:gradsusr@gradsusr.org">GrADS Users Forum</a> </div>
<div style="FONT: 10pt arial"><b>Sent:</b> Friday, January 16, 2015 11:09
PM</div>
<div style="FONT: 10pt arial"><b>Subject:</b> [gradsusr] New meteogram with
0.25-degree GFS data</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Dear Users,</div>
<div>I am working on transitioning my <a href="http://wxmaps.org/">wxmaps.org</a> scripts to use the 0.25-degree GFS
output. The first script to test was the meteogram, below is a sample based on
today’s 12Z forecast. I thought I would share it here and see if any of you
want to give me some feedback while it is sitting on the top of my to-do list.
I don’t modify these scripts all that often, so now is the time to express
yourself, if you have an opinion. </div>
<div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The 3-hourly output goes out to hour 240, so now it’s a 10-day meteogram.
That forced me to draw it in an 11x11 page to keep it readable. The image size
will be bigger, too. The increased vertical resolution makes the top panel a
bit crowded, even though I expanded its vertical real estate by merging the
SLP and 1000-500mb thickness panels. I know the cloud cover variables are not
of great interest, but please don’t vote to have them removed, I really like
the way it appears that the bars in the precip panel are falling out of the
clouds. For comparison, here is the link to the 0.5-degree meteogram: <a href="http://wxmaps.org/pix2/dcagfs.png">http://wxmaps.org/pix2/dcagfs.png</a>. </div></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>If you are kind and helpful, I will package up the new script with a
wrapper to get the needed data from our GDS to make it easier to draw a
high-res meteogram for any location. </div>
<div>—Jennifer</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div><span><Screen Shot 2015-01-16 at 4.38.11 PM.png></span><br>
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<div>--</div>
<div>Jennifer M. Adams<br>Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies
(COLA)<br>111 Research Hall, Mail Stop 2B3<br>George Mason University<br>4400
University Drive<br>Fairfax, VA 22030 <br><br></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div>--</div><div>Jennifer M. Adams<br>Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA)<br>111 Research Hall, Mail Stop 2B3<br>George Mason University<br>4400 University Drive<br>Fairfax, VA 22030 <br><br></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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