StormInitLocation

StormInitLocation writes the locations of significant storms to an SPDB database.

Overview

StormInitLocation takes storm information from a Titan database, determines which storms are significant in terms of longevity and area criteria, and writes the latitude and longitude of the storm initiation to an SPDB database.

Prerequesites

The following items are required:

• Storms data from Titan

Parameter file

StormInitLocation uses one parameter file that includes input/output directories and threshold data.

Ensure file is up to date

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

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

Important parameters

General

• triggerMode: decide how program is triggered, including archive mode (TRIGGER_ARCHIVE), running at a user-defined interval (TRIGGER_INTERVAL), and directly from Titan output (TRIGGER_LDATAINFO)
• triggerDir: directory to trigger from if triggerMode is TRIGGER_LDATAINFO
• titanUrl: path to the Titan data
• outUrl: directory where output will be written

Storm Thresholds

• temporalThreshold: length of time a storm must be in Titan to be considered significant (seconds)
• areaThreshold: storm area must surpass this threshold to be considered significant ([math]\displaystyle{ km^2 }[/math])

Running StormInitLocation

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

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

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

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

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

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