Is there anyone that can bring up europe radar into DA?
I see Nexrad is supported but thats for the US.
Please do try to add some things into DA for europe like Cloud layers options (fronts) ect.
Marcel
Radar
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Weasel
If you know of a European radar imagery site on the net, you may want to try this from the DA WS manual:
This function allows Digital Atmosphere to import radar images from websites and map them to the active workchart. Text and map overlays will usually be stripped from the image.
The reason for this module is the lack of raw radar data worldwide. The United States appears to be the only nation that openly distributes raw weather data, thus most of the "Radar" menu was built for U.S. sites. For other countries, the only way to analyze radar images is to obtain the GIF or JPG images. For some countries that are extremely restrictive with their data (such as the United Kingdom, which produces only coarse mosaics), even this module will not give satisfactory results.
When Import Radar Images is selected, a panel will be presented allowing the user to select which radar sites to view. After the desired stations are selected, Digital Atmosphere will access the data and then display the echoes on the workchart.
Currently there are predefined station lists only for Canada, Australia, and Mexico. Users are encouraged to add more stations and report the settings to us for inclusion in future builds.
Programming new radar sites
The DIGATMOS.RDY file controls all aspects of radar image importing. It contains a list of all radar stations with the image URLs, along with image reference information and color tables. These are set as shown below.
Using the radar resource table
The radar resource table, located at the top of DIGATMOS.RDY (between two rows of dashes) contains a list of radar sites, the image URLs, and information about the image.
Col 2-31 Site name. This is not used by Digital Atmosphere and is only to aid the user.
Col 33-37 Scale (km/pixel). This indicates the scale of the radar in kilometers per image pixel. This can be estimated using a graphics viewer and measuring the distance in pixels between two known locations (preferably range rings, if available).
Col 39-41 Range (km). This indicates the range (radius from radar) of the radar data. Digital Atmosphere looks at gates from 1 km to the value indicated here. Radar data that is further than this range is not imported. Setting this to too high a value will degrade the speed of the import routine.
Col 44-46 Center (X) (pixels). Indicates the location of the radar site in pixels from the left edge of the image. Acceptable values are 0-999.
Col 48-50 Center (Y) (pixels). Indicates the location of the radar site in pixels from the top edge of the image. Acceptable values are 0-999.
Col 53-56 Left X (pixels). Indicates the X coordinate (distance from left edge of image, in pixels) of the left edge of displayed radar data. This is important for omitting borders, text, scales, and other extraneous graphics when the radar range exceeds the border of the radar display (such as in Canada).
Col 58-61 Top Y (pixels). Indicates the Y coordinate (distance from top edge of image, in pixels)
of the top edge of displayed radar data. See Left X for more information.
Col 63-66 Right X (pixels). Indicates the X coordinate (distance from left edge of image, in pixels) of the right side of displayed radar data. See Left X for more information.
Col 68-71 Bottom Y (pixels). Indicates the Y coordinate (distance from top edge of image, in pixels) of the bottom edge of displayed radar data. See Left X for more information.
Col 74-75 Color table number. Indicates which color table should be used when gathering data from this image. Selecting the correct one is mandatory for being able to display data.
Col 78-83 Latitude. Latitude of the radar site in decimal degrees. Do not use minutes and seconds. Negative values are in the southern hemisphere.
Col 85-91 Longitude. Longitude of the radar site in decimal degrees. Do not use minutes and seconds. Negative values are in the western hemisphere.
Col 94-348 URL. The properly qualified website URL (RFC-1738 compliant) of the radar image.
Setting the workchart palette
The workchart palette settings are used to set output colors (for your workchart) for different dBZ (intensity) levels. This is important not only to allow the user to choose the color scheme they like most, but to allow standardization of the color palette in a way that that permits regional and international mosaics.
Each palette command must be ordered in ascending dBZ fashion; any echo equal to or over (but not going above succeeding palette entries) will be given the listed color. The command is:
PALETTE=dBZ,red,green,blue
where dBZ is the minimum dBZ value for this color, red is the red component (0-255), green is the green component (0-255), and blue is the blue component (0-255).
There can be up to 99 palette commands.
Setting master color tables
In order to extract radar information from an image, Digital Atmosphere must know what colors to look for on the image. To do this.
TABLE=tablenumber
where tablenumber can be any value between 1 and 99.
Following the table command, you can list up to 99 levels that Digital Atmosphere must find.
LEVEL=dBZ,red,green,blue,threshold
This tells Digital Atmosphere that "if you find any instance of (red)(green)(blue) at a given location, assign it the intensity dBZ". The threshold value allows leeway in interpreting a color (such as if a color is degraded by underlays or by JPEG compression. Use a threshold of 10 for good quality images and 100 to 150 for bad quality images. To evaluate threshold, Digital Atmosphere looks at the difference in the red, green, and blue components between the pixel and the master color table level, squares each one of them, adds the result, then takes the square root. Thus if the red and green differ by 20 units and blue differs by 50 units, then Digital Atmosphere will ignore the pixel unless the threshold setting is 58 or more.
Radar range ring
You can set Digital Atmosphere to display the maximum range for each radar as a ring. The 60 dBZ color will be used. To do this, set
RANGERING=1
To disable this feature, set
RANGERING=0
Programming dynamic image filenames
Some radar images are not stored using a static filename but using a timestamp or other code, which always changes. You can have Digital Atmosphere try to guess the URL by pointing it to a master page (in HTML), which contains the filename. The URL is then coded as such:
radarhtmlpageurl @@@@@searchstring
When Digital Atmosphere sees this, it will access the URL, treat it as an HTML, and look for the searchstring to find the image URL. The searchstring must be part of the URL where the image is located.
For example, Canada uses timestamps so that an image resides here, and the filename changes as new images come in:
http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/data/rada ... _18_40.GIF
The master page is located here:
http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html?id=XLA
Within that HTML page (which can be viewed in any browser with View Source) we see that the image is displayed on this line:
[img]/data/radar/temp_image/XLA_CAPPI_2005_07_22_18_40.GIF[/img]
So the searchstring should be set to "/data/radar/temp_image", which signifies to Digital Atmosphere to "find text that looks like this" to obtain the URL. The data within quotes is used to build the URL for the actual radar image.
This function allows Digital Atmosphere to import radar images from websites and map them to the active workchart. Text and map overlays will usually be stripped from the image.
The reason for this module is the lack of raw radar data worldwide. The United States appears to be the only nation that openly distributes raw weather data, thus most of the "Radar" menu was built for U.S. sites. For other countries, the only way to analyze radar images is to obtain the GIF or JPG images. For some countries that are extremely restrictive with their data (such as the United Kingdom, which produces only coarse mosaics), even this module will not give satisfactory results.
When Import Radar Images is selected, a panel will be presented allowing the user to select which radar sites to view. After the desired stations are selected, Digital Atmosphere will access the data and then display the echoes on the workchart.
Currently there are predefined station lists only for Canada, Australia, and Mexico. Users are encouraged to add more stations and report the settings to us for inclusion in future builds.
Programming new radar sites
The DIGATMOS.RDY file controls all aspects of radar image importing. It contains a list of all radar stations with the image URLs, along with image reference information and color tables. These are set as shown below.
Using the radar resource table
The radar resource table, located at the top of DIGATMOS.RDY (between two rows of dashes) contains a list of radar sites, the image URLs, and information about the image.
Col 2-31 Site name. This is not used by Digital Atmosphere and is only to aid the user.
Col 33-37 Scale (km/pixel). This indicates the scale of the radar in kilometers per image pixel. This can be estimated using a graphics viewer and measuring the distance in pixels between two known locations (preferably range rings, if available).
Col 39-41 Range (km). This indicates the range (radius from radar) of the radar data. Digital Atmosphere looks at gates from 1 km to the value indicated here. Radar data that is further than this range is not imported. Setting this to too high a value will degrade the speed of the import routine.
Col 44-46 Center (X) (pixels). Indicates the location of the radar site in pixels from the left edge of the image. Acceptable values are 0-999.
Col 48-50 Center (Y) (pixels). Indicates the location of the radar site in pixels from the top edge of the image. Acceptable values are 0-999.
Col 53-56 Left X (pixels). Indicates the X coordinate (distance from left edge of image, in pixels) of the left edge of displayed radar data. This is important for omitting borders, text, scales, and other extraneous graphics when the radar range exceeds the border of the radar display (such as in Canada).
Col 58-61 Top Y (pixels). Indicates the Y coordinate (distance from top edge of image, in pixels)
of the top edge of displayed radar data. See Left X for more information.
Col 63-66 Right X (pixels). Indicates the X coordinate (distance from left edge of image, in pixels) of the right side of displayed radar data. See Left X for more information.
Col 68-71 Bottom Y (pixels). Indicates the Y coordinate (distance from top edge of image, in pixels) of the bottom edge of displayed radar data. See Left X for more information.
Col 74-75 Color table number. Indicates which color table should be used when gathering data from this image. Selecting the correct one is mandatory for being able to display data.
Col 78-83 Latitude. Latitude of the radar site in decimal degrees. Do not use minutes and seconds. Negative values are in the southern hemisphere.
Col 85-91 Longitude. Longitude of the radar site in decimal degrees. Do not use minutes and seconds. Negative values are in the western hemisphere.
Col 94-348 URL. The properly qualified website URL (RFC-1738 compliant) of the radar image.
Setting the workchart palette
The workchart palette settings are used to set output colors (for your workchart) for different dBZ (intensity) levels. This is important not only to allow the user to choose the color scheme they like most, but to allow standardization of the color palette in a way that that permits regional and international mosaics.
Each palette command must be ordered in ascending dBZ fashion; any echo equal to or over (but not going above succeeding palette entries) will be given the listed color. The command is:
PALETTE=dBZ,red,green,blue
where dBZ is the minimum dBZ value for this color, red is the red component (0-255), green is the green component (0-255), and blue is the blue component (0-255).
There can be up to 99 palette commands.
Setting master color tables
In order to extract radar information from an image, Digital Atmosphere must know what colors to look for on the image. To do this.
TABLE=tablenumber
where tablenumber can be any value between 1 and 99.
Following the table command, you can list up to 99 levels that Digital Atmosphere must find.
LEVEL=dBZ,red,green,blue,threshold
This tells Digital Atmosphere that "if you find any instance of (red)(green)(blue) at a given location, assign it the intensity dBZ". The threshold value allows leeway in interpreting a color (such as if a color is degraded by underlays or by JPEG compression. Use a threshold of 10 for good quality images and 100 to 150 for bad quality images. To evaluate threshold, Digital Atmosphere looks at the difference in the red, green, and blue components between the pixel and the master color table level, squares each one of them, adds the result, then takes the square root. Thus if the red and green differ by 20 units and blue differs by 50 units, then Digital Atmosphere will ignore the pixel unless the threshold setting is 58 or more.
Radar range ring
You can set Digital Atmosphere to display the maximum range for each radar as a ring. The 60 dBZ color will be used. To do this, set
RANGERING=1
To disable this feature, set
RANGERING=0
Programming dynamic image filenames
Some radar images are not stored using a static filename but using a timestamp or other code, which always changes. You can have Digital Atmosphere try to guess the URL by pointing it to a master page (in HTML), which contains the filename. The URL is then coded as such:
radarhtmlpageurl @@@@@searchstring
When Digital Atmosphere sees this, it will access the URL, treat it as an HTML, and look for the searchstring to find the image URL. The searchstring must be part of the URL where the image is located.
For example, Canada uses timestamps so that an image resides here, and the filename changes as new images come in:
http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/data/rada ... _18_40.GIF
The master page is located here:
http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html?id=XLA
Within that HTML page (which can be viewed in any browser with View Source) we see that the image is displayed on this line:
[img]/data/radar/temp_image/XLA_CAPPI_2005_07_22_18_40.GIF[/img]
So the searchstring should be set to "/data/radar/temp_image", which signifies to Digital Atmosphere to "find text that looks like this" to obtain the URL. The data within quotes is used to build the URL for the actual radar image.
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Weasel