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 either old FOS (Family of Services) or NOAAPORT.  The Unisys NOAAPORT ingest system is idealy suited to provide data to WXP.
  
  
• 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 NAM, GFS and other models)
  • radar (MDR, RCM, NIDS (including NOAAPORT), WSI NOWRad, Kavouras Mosaic, Unisys Mosaic)
  • satellite imagery (McIDAS AREA, NOAAPORT, Unisys Images)
  • gridded numerical forecasts (GRIB from NCEP and NOAAPORT as well as most generic GRIB v1 and v2 products).
  • NLDN and NAPLN lightning data
    
  • Profiler data
  • SHEF, CLIMAT, hurricane data parsing
  • 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 and WXP generated radar mosaics
  • Plots raw and derived GRIB model data

• Output Devices
  WXP offers direct output to X windows and Win32 (Windows NT/XP), hardcopy output for Postscript and HPGL/PCL5, and metafile output. Also, WXP programs can directly generate GIF and PNG 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 can animate plots based on time (last 5 hours of data) or on forecast (every 6 hours into future).  Up to 200 frames can be used.
  

• 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 image 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 800-610-9473 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/index.html ) for information on WXP and online documentation on the package.

For further information about WXP, email technical-support@weather.unisys.com
Last updated by Dan Vietor on January 5, 2010