Overview: WXP, the Weather Processor, is a suite of programs/toolkit for analyzing and displaying meteorological data and satellite images. WXP originated at Purdue University but is now being developed by Unisys. It is intended to be an general purpose weather visualization tool for near-realtime and archived meteorological data. The software package handles data broadcast directly by the National Weather Service, reads in and files the data, decodes and parses the information and finally visualizes the data in a variety of formats. The primary audience for the package are meteorologists but is also developed to provide non-meteorologists the ability to view the data with varying degrees of complexity.

Features:

• Ingest of National Weather Service (NWS) Data Feeds
  WXP offers data ingest programs which will read and save data from:
  • Standard NWS Family of Services (FOS) data feeds
    • Domestic Data
    • Public Products
    • International Data
    • High Resolution Service (GRIB)
  • FAA 604
  • NOAAPORT using the Unisys NOAAPORT Ingestor product.

  The ingest program will parse, select and save data in users designated files on a local data server.

• Full Range of Data Types
  Use WXP to view and analyze:
  • surface observations (SAO, METAR, SYNOP, SHIP, BUOY, DRIBU, CMAN)
  • upper-air (TTAA, TTBB, TTCC, TTDD, PPAA, PPBB, PPDD, UUAA, UUBB, UUCC, UUDD)
  • Model Output Statistical (MOS/FOUS from NGM, ETA and MRF models)
  • radar (MDR, RCM, RRWDS, NIDS (including NOAAPORT), WSI NOWRad, Kavouras Mosaic, Unisys Mosaic)
  • satellite imagery (McIDAS AREA, NOAAPORT, Unisys Images)
  • gridded numerical forecasts (GRIB format from HRS, NCEP and NOAAPORT as well as most generic GRIB products).
  • NLDN lightning data (including NOAAPORT by special license)
  • Profiler data
  • SHEF, CLIMAT, hurricane data parsing
  • TAF data reformatting
  • Text data such as watches, warnings, advisories and forecasts.

• Decoders and Parsers
  WXP provides programs to decode data types such as METAR, SYNOP, Upper Air and GRIB data.  Also, WXP provides parsing programs to select specific text products from ingested data files such as forecasts, advisories and warnings.

• Standard Meteorological Analysis Programs
  WXP includes routines for standard meteorological analyses:
  • Plotting and contouring (line and color-fill) of all data types
  • Regional, CONUS and international plotting of surface and upper air data
  • Plot station models for surface and upper air
  • Plots all general surface information including max/min temperature, precipitation and snow cover
  • Plots meteogram (time series of surface data) of observations and forecasts using MOS data
  • Plot upper air data on any pressure, height or isentropic level including freezing and tropopause levels
  • Plot upper air parameters for a specific level or layer
  • Plots most common used sounding and stability indices including LI, KI, precipitable water, CAPE, Helicity and shear
  • Plots derived parameters such as vorticity, convergence, isentropic lifting and Q vectors
  • Plots soundings using SkewT, Emagrams and Stuves
  • Plots, enhances and remaps satellite images
  • Plots MDR, RCM, NIDS radar data including vendor CONUS radar mosaics
  • Plots raw and derived GRIB model data

• Output Devices
  WXP offers direct output to X windows and Win32 (Windows 95/98/NT), hardcopy output for Postscript and HPGL/PCL5, and metafile output. Also, WXP programs can directly generate GIF files.

• Image Overlays
  WXP allows you to overlay graphic analyses based on a predetermined projection domain. This also includes navigated satellite images. Overlay products can be printed using PostScript and HPGL/PCL5 output programs.

• Animation
  WXP offers an interactive animation program that allows up to 128 images or plots to be animated. With a front-end shell, images may be added, deleted, or annotated. This allows any WXP program to generate multiple overlay plots and animate them. The program can also import and export GIF images.

• Multiple Interfaces
  WXP provides a set of simple text menus to quickly generate plots.  WXP is best used in scripts using the command line interface to create tailored graphics including overlays, loops and multipanel plots. Tailored plots can be automatically saved to GIF files for use on web servers.  A mouse-driven interface is available for interactive zoom, sounding modification and loop control.

Platforms:

Minimum platform requirements are:

Distribution:

Unisys licenses and distributes WXP. Binary only licenses are available for UNIX and Windows 95/98/NT platforms on a single machine or site license basis.  Please call Robert Benedict (listed above) for specific pricing and license information.

WXP (binaries and database files) is available online from a password protected web site.
Current database files are available from Unisys Web server at http://weather.unisys.com/wxp/etc.

Documentation is available in HTML, PDF and hardcopy formats.

For More Information:

Visit the WXP Web server (http://weather.unisys.com/) for samples of WXP output.

Visit the WXP documentation site (http://weather.unisys.com/wxp ) for information on WXP and online documentation on the package.

WXP Y2K Compliance Statement

For further information about WXP, email devo@ks.unisys.com
Last updated by Dan Vietor on November 30, 2001