Table of Contents - The Atmospheric Studies Group at TRC

Section 8: CALMET Model Files
8.2 PRTMET Meteorological Display Program
The CALMET meteorological model generates a large, binary meteorological file of hourly or subhourly
data which includes gridded wind fields at multiple levels and gridded surface meteorological fields such
as PGT (Pasquill-Gifford-Turner) stability class, friction velocity, Monin-Obukhov length, mixing height,
convective velocity scale, and precipitation rate. For many typical applications, this output file will be
many megabytes or more in volume. The PRTMET program is a postprocessor intended to aid in the
analysis of the CALMET output data base by allowing the user to display selected portions of the
meteorological data.
• PRTMET has the following capabilities and options.
• Option to print or suppress printing of the gridded meteorological fields (wind fields and
surface meteorological variables).
• User-selected levels of the wind fields printed.
• Option to display wind fields as U, V components or as wind speed and wind direction.
• User-selected wind speed conversion factor for changing units (default units: m/s).
• Option to print plot files of all the meteorological variables (horizontal slices), in a format
compatible with SURFER® (contour plots and/or vector plots).
• Option to print time-series of any number of variables at a single gridpoint, in a separate file
compatible with Excel (column format)
• Option to produce plot files of snapshots and/or average fields.
• Option to print or suppress printing of the gridded geophysical variables (surface roughness
lengths, land use categories, terrain elevations).
• Option to print plot files of the gridded geophysical variables.
• Option to print or suppress printing of X, Y coordinates of surface stations, upper air stations,
and precipitation stations used in the modeling.
• Option to print or suppress printing of the CALMET run control variables stored in the
header records of the CALMET output file.
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