Initial Development of the METexpress Visualization Tool

A major goal of the Next Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS) is to implement a unified verification system for National Weather Service (NWS) research to operations projects, in order to have a common framework for evaluating atmospheric model development efforts. This unified verification system uses the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)’s Model Evaluation Tools (MET) to process model output into a common format, which is then stored in a relational or document database. Traditionally, developers then needed to use NCAR’s METviewer tool to retrieve and visualize their stored data. However, while METviewer has extensive capabilities and options for analyzing data, it also has a very steep learning curve, which can hinder users who want to quickly make a few plots of their latest experimental model output. To address this aspect, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Global Systems Division (GSD) and NCAR collaboratively developed METexpress, a lighter-weight, quick-start visualization suite designed to work in tandem with METviewer. While METviewer provides a large selection of advanced data analysis tools, METexpress features an intuitive interface with which users can quickly produce interactive graphs of the most common plot types.

METexpress was developed from GSD’s Model Analysis Tool Suite framework, which consists of individual apps, each designed to verify a particular meteorological facet, and supports a variety of plot types, such as timeseries, vertical profiles, diurnal averages, dieoff curves, histograms, and contour plots. There are currently three METexpress apps: MET Anomaly Correlation, which displays the anomaly correlation coefficient of various fields for specified regions and heights; MET Surface, which shows verification statistics for surface variables such as 2-meter temperature and 10-meter wind; and MET Upper Air, which features the same verification statistics for fields located at higher levels of the atmosphere. In the coming year, GSD plans to add a MET Ensemble app, for verifying ensemble simulations; a MET Air Quality app, to aid in air pollution model verification; and a MET Precipitation app, to verify precipitation forecasts. METexpress can be deployed both on local virtual machines, and also in the cloud, to assist collaboration between different agencies. Our hope is that METexpress will improve the verification options available to the NWS, aiding in overall NGGPS development.