This plugin reads the meteorological forecast data downscaled for each of the Swiss meteorological networks IMIS/ANETZ stations as preprocessed by the Operational Snow-Hydrological Service of the WSL. The data is written as Matlab binary files (.mat), one per meteorological parameter and per timestep, available on an access-controlled server after each new COSMO run. It therefore requires a third party library to read this file format: the Open Source MatIO library. This can be installed directly from the default repositories under Linux or installed by downloading the proper package for Windows or OsX.

Note: If non-ascii characters have been used and the file has been created under Windows, some of the strings might end up using the UTF-16 encoding. This requires a recent version of libmatio (see this issue). Another option would be to add at the begining of the Matlab routine a call to feature('DefaultCharacterSet', 'UTF8') in order to switch from the current default (which can be read by the same call, ommitting the 'UTF8' option) to the (partial) UTF-8 encoding of Matlab.

Data structure

The files are named with the following schema: {parameter}_{timestep}_{cosmo model version}_F_{run time}.mat with the following possible values:

parameter is one of idif, idir, albd, ilwr, pair, prec, rhum, tcor, wcor, wdir;
timestep is written as purely numeric ISO with minute resolution;
cosmo model version could be any of cosmo7, cosmo2, cosmo1, cosmoE;
run time is the purely numeric ISO date and time of when COSMO produced the dataset.

The files have the following internal data structure (represented as "name {data type}"):

     stat {1x1 struct}
       ├── time {1x1 array of doubles}
       ├── data {1x623 array of doubles}
       ├── acro {1x623 array of arrays of char}
       ├── dunit {array of char}
       ├── type {array of char}
       └── name {array of char}

The stations' acronyms follow a fixed order but their coordinates must be provided in a separate file, given as METAFILE key (see below). This file must have the following structure (the x and y coordinates being the CH1903 easting and northing, respectively):

     statlist {1x1 struct}
       ├── acro {1x623 array of arrays of char}
       ├── name {1x623 array of arrays of char}
       ├── x {1x623 array of doubles}
       ├── y {1x623 array of doubles}
       └── z {1x623 array of doubles}

Keywords

This plugin uses the following keywords:

COORDSYS: coordinate system (see Coords); [Input] and [Output] section
COORDPARAM: extra coordinates parameters (see Coords); [Input] and [Output] section
METEOPATH: directory containing all the data files with the proper file naming schema; [Input] section
METEOPATH_RECURSIVE: should meteopath be searched recursively for files? (default: no); [Input] section
STATION#: input stations' IDs (in METEOPATH). As many meteofiles as needed may be specified
METAFILE: file containing the stations' IDs, names and location; [Input] section (either within METEOPATH if not path is provided or within the provided path)
OSHD_DEBUG: write out extra information to better show what is in the files

Example use

[Input]
METEO = OSHD
METEOPATH = /local/LATEST_03h_RUN
METEOPATH_RECURSIVE = true
METAFILE  = STAT_LIST.mat ;another possibility could be /local/metadata/STAT_LIST.mat
STATION1  = ATT2
STATION2  = WFJ2