Read and analyze ARL meteorological files.

This project aims to create a Python package for reading and analyzing NOAA ARL (Air Resources Laboratory) meteorological files.

• Current capability: ARLMet can parse ARL files and load records into xarray DataArray/Dataset structures. Core data ingest and record unpacking are functional, but higher-level features remain limited.
• Immediate tasks:
  • Calculate vertical coordinates in meters above ground level (m AGL) from the ARL vertical axis information.
  • Calculate mean sea level (MSL) heights. This requires terrain elevation; if terrain is not present in the ARLMet data, provide and document a default terrain file (or a configurable fallback) to compute MSL.
  • Update dataset and variable attributes.
  • Make attributes CF-compliant (standard names, units, axis/coordinates, and global metadata).
• Next steps: add tests and examples for vertical coordinate handling, document the default-terrain behaviour, and expand CF attribute coverage across variables and coordinates.

The follow pages provide useful information about ARL files and their structure:

• HYSPLIT User Guide
• HYSPLIT HTML page for Meteorology
• The READY Archive

Additionally, here is an example of the packing for GDAS1 files.

Finally, a somewhat related project is ARLreader, however, it currently only works with GDAS1 files and I wanted to load data into xarray structures.

git clone https://github.com/jmineau/arl-met.git
cd arl-met
pip install -e .

import arlmet

# Add usage example here

Full documentation is available at https://jmineau.github.io/arl-met/

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

James Mineau - jmineau