Snowtools

snowtools is a series of mostly python scripts that are designed to make our life simpler in terms of pre- and post-processing of SURFEX-Crocus snow model simulations.

snowtools is freely distributed under CeCILL-C licence. See LICENCE for details

Note that this package is only useful for people interested in using numerical codes of snowpack modelling on a Linux environment. The package does not include any meteorological or snow data.

The structure of snowtools code base is available here.

Installation

For installation of this package, please refer to Install documentation

SURFEX

Snowtools is often used in combination with SURFEX to run snow cover simulations. Snowtools only contain code for post- and pre-processing and driving simulations but no the core code of the Crocus snow cover model which is inside the SURFEX repository.

General informations about snowpack modelling with SURFEX-Crocus can be found here: http://www.cnrm-game-meteo.fr/spip.php?rubrique73

Users interested by snow modeling with SURFEX/Crocus model must follow detailed instructions at https://opensource.umr-cnrm.fr/projects/snowtools_git/wiki/Procedure_for_new_users to get access to SURFEX source code.

Some additional information are provided directly here:

• Installation of SURFEX
• Run a SURFEX-Crocus simulation
• Few informations on SURFEX-Crocus simulations
• Information for SURFEX developers
• Information for snowtools developers

For Meteo-France developers, also consider installing Vortex.

First test

If you correctly installed the snowtools and SURFEX projects, you must be able to run successfully the following test case:

s2m research -f $SNOWTOOLS_CEN/snowtools/DATA/FORCING_test_base.nc -b 20100801 -e 20110801 -o output -g -s ...yoursurfexdirectory.../exe

⚠️ If you installed SURFEX with MPIAUTO option, you have to set the environment variable NOFFLINE to 1 to make this test work (because this test have only one simulation point).

Plot tools

As SURFEX-Crocus output files are netCDF files, the visualization of scalar variables is possible with classical visualization tools for NetCDF files, for example :

• ncview
• pyncview

However, visualization of the simulated vertical profiles of the snowpack can be difficult due to the lagrangian discretization of Crocus numerical layers and requires specific softwares. snowtools propose two dedicated softwares:

• proplotter: a graphical user interface for plotting snow profiles evolution across simulations (point or gridded simulations, one point at each time).
• procompare: a graphical user interface to compare two simulations

These two softwares are installed with the snowtools repository.

Full documentation

The full documentation is available directly for Meteo-France members on http://intra.cnrm.meteo.fr/cen/snowtools.

Otherwise, full snowtools documentation could be generated from doc folder by simply running make html.

Assistance

For users which meet technical difficulties during the installation or the execution of the codes, we only provide support through the dedicated interface on: https://github.com/UMR-CNRM/snowtools-tickets. We will try to answer as soon as possible although we can not guarantee a fixed response time.

Note that the access to tickets is limited to known users of the SURFEX-Crocus or snowtools. If you do not already have an access, please ask for access by email to crocus at meteo dot fr.