User’s Guide

Foreword: A note to METplus Wrappers users

This User’s Guide is provided as an aid to users of the Model Evaluation Tools (MET) and it’s companion package METplus Wrappers. MET is a suite of verification tools developed and supported to community via the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) for use by the numerical weather prediction community. METplus Wrappers are intended to be a suite of Python wrappers and ancillary scripts to enhance the user’s ability to quickly set-up and run MET. Over the next year, METplus Wrappers will become the authoritative repository for verification of the Unified Forecast System.

It is important to note here that METplus Wrappers is an evolving software package. The METplus Wrappers package was first released in 2017. This documentation describes the 5.1.0 release (July 2023). Intermediate releases may include bug fixes. METplus Wrappers is also be able to accept new modules contributed by the community. While we are setting up our community contribution protocol, please create a post in the METplus GitHub Discussions Forum and inform us of your desired contribution. We will then determine the maturity of any new verification method and coordinate the inclusion of the new module in a future version.

Model Evaluation Tools Plus (METplus) TERMS OF USE - IMPORTANT!

2023, UCAR/NCAR, NOAA, CSU/CIRA, and CU/CIRES Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Citations

The citation for this User’s Guide should be:

Opatz, J., J. Halley Gotway, T. Jensen, J. Vigh, M. Row, C. Kalb, H. Fisher, L. Goodrich, D. Adriaansen, M. Win-Gildenmeister, G. McCabe, J. Prestopnik, J. Frimel, L. Blank, T. Arbetter, 2023: The METplus Version 5.1.0 User’s Guide. Developmental Testbed Center. Available at: https://github.com/dtcenter/METplus/releases.

Acknowledgments

We thank all of the METplus sponsors including: DTC partners (NOAA, NCAR, USAF, and NSF), along with NOAA/Office of Atmospheric Research (OAR), NOAA/National Weather Service, NOAA/Joint Technology Transfer Program (JTTI), NOAA/Subseasonal to Seasonal (S2S) Project, NOAA/Unified Forecast System Research to Operations Project (UFS R2O), Met Office, and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). Thanks also go to the staff at the Developmental Testbed Center for their help, advice, and many types of support. We released METplus Alpha in February 2017 and would not have made a decade of cutting-edge verification support without those who participated in DTC planning workshops and the United Forecast System Working Groups (UFS WGs). Finally, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is sponsored by NSF.