HWRF  v3.7a_Public_Release
HWRF Model Scripts

Welcome to the HWRF scripting system documentation. This manual seeks to document every aspect of the HWRF scripts, at both a high level and low level. Every function, argument, class, script, module, member variable and module-level variable is documented, and there are examples in many places of how to extend the scripts and Python libraries. There are also pages that give a high-level description of how the scripts work.

Note
The webpage is meant to be more consistent with the full operational capability of HWRF, so inconsistencies with information contained in the HWRF v3.7a Users' Guide and on this website are possible. In the event of a contradiction, the users' guide wins!

What is All of This?

The HWRF is a telescopic nesting, regional, finite difference, hurricane model. It has ocean coupling, a sophisticated post-processing system, and it is run operationally by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Central Operations (NCO). It is distributed publicly, allowing many organizations to contribute to its development. Public contributions have made their way into the operational HWRF, improving the forecast. These forecasts are done for all tropical cyclones worldwide that the National Hurricane Center (NHC) and Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) report to NCEP.

You can find more information about the HWRF on these websites:

What Where
Forecast graphics http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/HWRF
Community website http://www.dtcenter.org/HurrWRF/users/
Subversion repository https://svn-dtc-hwrf.cgd.ucar.edu/
Real-time data ftp://ftpprd.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/hur/prod/

The rest of this website explains in great detail how to install, configure, run and develop the HWRF scripts.


Installing HWRF

If you downloaded HWRF from the DTC Subversion repository, this page is for you. It explains in detail how to install the HWRF:

If you are a public community user that downloaded HWRF tar files from the dtcenter website, you will have to go back to that website for installation instructions:

NCEP Central Operations (NCO) Senior Program Analysts (SPAs) should use our specialized SPA guide:

After you have installed the HWRF, you must then configure it to run on your machine, using the model settings you want.


Configuring and Running the HWRF

The HWRF is designed to be highly configurable. In many cases, you don't have to do any development, but instead just tweak a configuration file. Detailed information about configuring the HWRF is found in this page and its subpages:

We have a detailed guide on how to run HWRF using Rocoto here:

We will be adding more pages on these topics in the near future, including where to find log files, and troubleshooting problems.


Developing the HWRF

Users new to the HWRF scripting system should read the high-level overview pages before delving into the detailed documentation.

You can also explore the "Classes" and "Packages" tabs at the top of this page.


Generating the Website

This manual is a living document. It is generated from special comments in the scripts themselves by a program called Doxygen, a documentation generation suite. Users can generate the entire website, and a LaTeX version of the same, if they have Doxygen version 1.8.9.1.

1 svn checkout https://svn-dtc-hwrf.cgd.ucar.edu/branches/doc doc-branch
2 cd doc-branch/sorc/
3 make doc
4 cd ../doc
5 # copy the html/ directory to a web server

As the HWRF trunk and branches are updated, the documentation should be updated as well, and any public version of this manual should add the new version.