RadxSunMon

RadxSunMon searches for sun spikes and performs solar analysis.

Overview

RadxSunMon searches for sun spikes and performs solar analysis.

Prerequesites

The following items are required:

• Polarimetric radar data (any Radx supported format, e.g., cfradial)

Parameter file

RadxSunMon uses one parameter file that includes information about the files and sun scan analysis parameters.

Ensure file is up to date

To obtain the default parameter file, use the following command:

/path/to/lrose/install/bin/RadxSunMon -print_params > param_file_name

If you already have a parameter file and simply want to check for (and add) updated parameters while retaining current parameters, use the following command:

/path/to/lrose/install/bin/RadxSunMon -params orig_param_file_name -print_params > new_param_file_name

Important parameters

Reading the volume moments data

• mode: determines if the program waits for new files (REALTIME), moves through start and end times specified on the command line (ARCHIVE), or moves through list of files specified on the command line (FILELIST)
• moments_input_dir: directory containing the data

Input field names

• dbmhc_field_name: name of power in horizontal co-polar channel
• dbmvc_field_name: name of power in vertical co-polar channel
• dbmhx_field_name: name of power in horizontal cross-polar channel
• dbmvx_field_name: name of power in vertical cross-polar channel
• vel_field_name: name of velocity field
• ncp_field_name: NCP field name
• estimate_ncp_from_spectrum_width: option to estimate NCP from spectrum width if the former is unavailable
• width_field_name: name of spectrum width field

Write results

• write_results_to_spdb: option to write out results to Spdb
• spdb_output_url: Spdb database will be written to this directory

Running RadxSunMon

To check all command line options for RadxSunMon, including debugging options and file paths, type the following command into a terminal.

/path/to/lrose/install/bin/RadxSunMon -h

Once your parameter file is complete, use a command similar to the following to run the application:

/path/to/lrose/install/bin/RadxSunMon -params param_file_name

The user can also specify the location of cfradial files in the following manner:

/path/to/lrose/install/bin/RadxSunMon -f /path/to/cfradial/files/ -params param_file_name