METplus version 5.1.0
Developed by the Developmental Testbed Center, Boulder, CO
History
The Model Evaluation Tools (MET) were developed by the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) and released in January 2008. The goal of the tools was to provide the community with a platform-independent and extensible framework for reproducible verification. The DTC partners, including NCAR, NOAA, and the USAF, decided to start by replicating the NOAA EMC (see list of acronyms below) Mesoscale Branch verification package, called VSDB. In the first release, MET included several pre-processing, statistical, and analysis tools to provide the same primary functionality as the EMC VSDB system, and also included a spatial verification package called MODE.
Over the years, MET and VSDB packages grew in complexity. Verification capability at other NOAA laboratories, such as ESRL, were also under heavy development. An effort to unify verification capability was first started under the HIWPP project and led by NOAA ESRL. In 2015, the NGGPS Program Office started working groups to focus on several aspects of the next gen system, including the Verification and Validation Working Group. This group made the recommendation to use MET as the foundation for a unified verification capability. In 2016, NCAR and GSD leads visited EMC to gather requirements. At that time, the concept of METplus was developed as it extends beyond the original code base. It was originally MET+ but several constraints have driven the transition to the use of METplus. METplus is now the unified verification, validation, and diagnostics capability for NOAA’s UFS and a component of NCAR’s SIMA modeling frameworks. It is being actively developed by NCAR, ESRL, EMC and is open to community contributions.
METplus Concept
METplus is the overarching, or umbrella, repository and hence framework for the Unified Forecast System verification capability. It is intended to be extensible through adding additional capability developed by the community. The core components of the framework include MET, the associated database and display systems called METviewer and METexpress, and a suite of Python wrappers to provide low-level automation and examples, also called use-cases. A description of each tool along with some ancillary repositories are as follows:
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wrappers - suite of Python-based wrappers that provide low-level automation of the METplus software components listed below
use-cases - example configuration files and sample data to demonstrate scientific applications of the METplus wrappers
MET (repo, docs) - core statistical tool that matches up grids with either gridded analyses or point observations and applies configurable methods to compute statistics and diagnostics
METviewer (repo, docs) - core database and display system intended for deep analysis of MET output
METexpress (repo, docs) - core database and display system intended for quick analysis via pre-defined queries of MET output
METcalcpy (repo, docs) - suite of Python-based scripts to be used by other components of METplus tools for statistical aggregation, event equalization, and other analysis needs
METplotpy (repo, docs) - suite of Python-based scripts to plot MET output, and in come cases provide additional post-processing of output prior to plotting
METdataio (repo, docs) - database to store MET output and to be used by both METviewer and METexpress
The umbrella repository will be brought together by using a software package called manage_externals developed by the Community Earth System Modeling (CESM) team, hosted at NCAR and NOAA Earth System’s Research Laboratory. The manage_externals paackage was developed because CESM is comprised of a number of different components that are developed and managed independently. Each component also may have additional “external” dependencies that need to be maintained independently.
Acronyms
MET - Model Evaluation Tools
DTC - Developmental Testbed Center
NCAR - National Center for Atmospheric Research
NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
EMC - Environmental Modeling Center
VSDB - Verification Statistics Data Base
MODE - Method for Object-Based Diagnostic Evaluation
UFS - Unified Forecast System
SIMA - System for Integrated Modeling of the Atmosphere
ESRL - Earth Systems Research Laboratory
HIWPP - High Impact Weather Predication Project
NGGPS - Next Generation Global Predicatio System
GSD - Global Systems Division