Programming Languages used in Meteorology

[JakkelWx]

What programming language do most meteorologists use if they are dealing/working with weather models and climate models? 

[MegaMike]

On 4/14/2019 at 5:49 PM, JakkelWx said:

What programming language do most meteorologists use if they are dealing/working with weather models and climate models? 

Mainly FORTRAN (great program for running numerical computations) on a Linux OS. When it comes to post-processing data; NCL, REVU, MATLAB, and or PYTHON. 

[Lindyschoe]

That's a great question! I always thought they use Python as their base language. However, I'm into website development, and I find HTML overrated now as I'm seeing more contemporary coding packages being available. I'm also aware that some of their command languages could use some AI tweaks from other sources like https://www.getparthenon.com since the needs in the medical fields are continuously changing. I'm pretty sure that doctors around the world would embrace such changes as a positive addition!

[MegaMike]

8 hours ago, Lindyschoe said:

That's a great question! I always thought they use Python as their base language. I'm into website developmnet and I find HTML overrated now as I'm seeing more contemporary coding packages being available.

I agree! It's a very good question. 

Now that it's been a few years, I'd rank it like this; FORTRAN, NCAR Command Language (NCL; which is no longer being updated), and Python. I develop script pretty often in NCL and Python for statistical and graphical reasons. FORTRAN's important because most, if not all, Numerical Weather Prediction programs are coded in FORTRAN.

If anyone's curious, the code to run NWP (for the Weather Research and Forecast model specifically) looks like this: https://github.com/wrf-model/WRF/tree/master/phys - Select any .F file in that repository.

For Python, the script will look like this: https://wrf-python.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plot.html (I mainly plot images with Python). NCL's pretty similar to this, but faster when working with .nc/.grb/etc... files though.

In all honesty, if you learn one language, you obtain a basic understanding of them all.

[ohleary]

FORTRAN, varieties of C, shell scripting mainly Bash, Python for post processing, then the visualization softwares, NCL, GEMPAK, etc

[weatherwiz]

I still want to learn Python (and become a Python master)  

I've thought about seeking out whether there are any online courses solely designed for teaching Python (geared towards meteorology). 

[Newman]

23 hours ago, weatherwiz said:

I still want to learn Python (and become a Python master)  

I've thought about seeking out whether there are any online courses solely designed for teaching Python (geared towards meteorology). 

https://sundogpublishingstore.myshopify.com/products/python-programming-and-visualization-for-scientists-2nd-ed

 

I've been using this book to self-learn Python. It's written by one of my profs here at Millersville Dr. Alex DeCaria. He knows his stuff, and the book is fantastic

[weatherwiz]

On 9/10/2021 at 9:30 AM, Newman said:

https://sundogpublishingstore.myshopify.com/products/python-programming-and-visualization-for-scientists-2nd-ed

 

I've been using this book to self-learn Python. It's written by one of my profs here at Millersville Dr. Alex DeCaria. He knows his stuff, and the book is fantastic

Thanks!!!