Program MM5toGrADS is an alternative plotting utility program for the MM5 modeling system.  The software makes use of standard Fortran 90 and no special libraries are needed to run it.  To be able to display the data, GrADS must be loaded on your system.  Development of this software has primarily been done by George H. Bryan from Pennsylvania State University. You can use the MM5toGrADS software to plot almost all of the output from the MM5 programs (TERRAIN_DOMAINx, REGRID_DOMAINx, RAWINS_DOMAINx, LITTLE_R_DOMAINx, MMINPUT_DOMAINx, LOWBDY_DOMAINx, and MMOUT_DOMAINx). This software enables the user to generate the plots needed interactively.  To be able to display the data, a user needs to have a basic understanding of the GrADS software.

Where to Start?

To start, go to MM5V3 directory and download the MM5toGrADS program tar file from NCAR's ftp site. Once you have it on your machine, type the following to unzip and untar it:

gunzip MM5toGrADS.TAR.gz
tar -xvf MM5toGrADS.TAR

After this, you should see a program directory MM5toGrADS/ created in your working directory. cd to this directory:

cd MM5toGrADS

and you should see the following files and subdirectories listed:

ls -l

-rwxr-xr-x   1 mesouser users       2621 Apr 15 11:39 CHANGES
-rwxr-xr-x   1 mesouser users       3671 Apr 16 11:23 Makefile
-rwxr-xr-x   1 mesouser users       3237 Apr 15 11:39 README
-rwxr-xr-x   1 mesouser users       1522 Apr 15 11:39 mm5_to_grads.csh
-rwxr-xr-x   1 mesouser users       7574 Apr 15 11:39 namelist.input
drwxr-xr-x   2 mesouser users       8192 May 15 10:41 src
 

Read the README file in the directory.

Now you are ready to work with the MM5toGrADS sotware.
 

How to Run MM5toGrADS?

1. Type the following to compile MM5toGrADS:

make
    (This software has been tested on Linux, DEC Alpha, SUN, SGI and IBM)

If it is successful,  the grads executable will be created and linked to the top directory as shown here:

lrwxrwxrwx   1 mesouser users         13 May 15 10:46 grads.exe@ -> src/grads.exe
 

Since this software has been written in Fortran 90, it only needs to be compiled once.
 

2.  Edit the namelist
 

3.  Edit the mm5_to_grads.csh script
 

4. Create graphical output:

    To create the grads output, you need to run the mm5_to_grads.csh script.

  example:   mm5_to_grads.csh  >& log

    If sucessful, the following files will be generated

-rw-r--r--   1 mesouser users        2641 May 15 11:13 grads_output.ctl
-rw-r--r--   1 mesouser users    14198400 May 15 11:13 grads_output.dat
-rw-r--r--   1 mesouser users       20341 May 15 11:13 log

Where, grads_output.ctl is the GrADS control file, and gards_output.dat is the GrADS data file.  Check the log file to ensure correct execution of the program.
 

5. To view the plots, envoke the grads software:

        grads -l -c "open grads_output"
 

Sample plots from MM5 model output for SOC case

Miscellanies:

Web site of the developer, George Bryan

GrADS software and documentation can be obtained from the GrADS web site.

Trouble Shooting:
 

If you have questions, ask mesouser.