BUFR Viewer

The BUFR Viewer is a new program which is still under development. At the moment, it can read the scatterometer data from Metop-A and ERS2 satellites, the 100km and 25km QuikSat data, the SatWinds data from AQUA and TERRA, and the AMV (air-motion vector) data from EUMETSAT. All this data is available over the EUMETCast dissemination system. It can also read data from the EUMETSAT Archive facility (UMARF) which is available off-line, and includes Meteosat-2 and Meteosat-7 data.

If there is sufficient interest, the program may be developed to allow other data to be visualised. Here is a sample of the ERS2 scatterometer product visualised by the BUFR Viewer, overlaid on a user-image background, and with country boundaries drawn in. You can zoom in to clarify data in a particular region.

Zoomed in on hurricane Bertha, July 2008. Bermuda is the tiny island in the north-west corner of the screenshot.

Data from Meteosat-9 showing winds over Europe. Data copyright (c) EUMETSAT 2008.

Supported data

Here is information about some of the supported data types, and the TelliCast and MSG Data Manager settings required. The disk locations are given relative to a standard MSG Data Manager installation, where the HRIT images are in \Images\HRIT\. I've also added a note about whether you get this data automatically, or whether you need to request it explicitly from EUMETSAT.

Description	Data Source	EUMETCast Data Channel	Need to Request	Disk location from MSG Data Manager	Control location in MSG Data Manager
Metop-A ASCAT	EUMETCast	[SAF-Europe]	?	\Images\SCAT\2008\06\13\	SAF tab, ASCAT
Metop-A ASCAT	ascat_20080613_173600_metopa_08567_eps_o_250_ovw.l2_bufr
ERS-2 SCAT	EUMETCast	[EUMETSAT Data Channel 1]	?	\Images\SCAT\2008\06\13\	SAF tab, ERS-SCAT
ERS-2 SCAT	scatt_20080613_173004_ers2___00000_ear_o_250_ovw.l2_bufr
QuikSat 25 & 100km sea-winds	EUMETCast	[SAF Europe]	?	\Images\SAF\2008\06\13\	SAF tab, Ocean & Sea Ice
QuikSat 25 & 100km sea-winds	S-OSI_-KNMI-QS100_D08165_S1503_E1617_B4679191
MODIS SatWind from AQUA and TERRA (north + south polar)	EUMETCast	[EUMETSAT Data Channel 4]	Yes	\Images\WINDS\2008\06\13\	SAF tab, MODIS winds
MODIS SatWind from AQUA and TERRA (north + south polar)	satwnd.bufrwvap.TERRA.D2008165.T1841Z.ENTC
Meteosat-9 AMV Air Motion Vectors	EUMETCast	[EUMETSAT Data Channel 3]	?	\Images\MPEF\2008\06\13\	MPEF tab, AMV
Meteosat-9 AMV Air Motion Vectors	200806131145-amv.bfr+
Metoesat-2 & -6 UMARF data	Meteosat data requested from the EUMETSAT UMARF Data Centre facility.
Metoesat-2 & -6 UMARF data	METEOSAT2-MVIRI-MTPHRVW1-NA-1-19871220132959.000000000Z-927200.bfr METEOSAT6-MVIRI-MTPCSWV-NA-1-20051204111130.000000000Z-926836.bfr
25km QuikSat UMARF data	QuikSat data requested from the EUMETSAT UMARF Data Centre facility.
25km QuikSat UMARF data	OASW025_20090707_073001_14088_M02.bufr

Note that the AMV (air motion vector) data contains a lot of motion vectors, and therefore may take some tens of seconds to decode and display.

Data which is NOT currently supported:

Level-1 data, such as:

ascat_20080522_042700_metopa_08247_eps_o_125.l1_bufr

Note the "L1" in the file extension.

Getting the BUFR Viewer

Download

V1.0.0	New program to decode BUFR data, choice of classic wind barb or air direction display, optionally, country boundaries can be displayed (file name is countries.dat, file lives in the same directory as BUFRviewer.exe, download here), optionally, a background map can be displayed (file name must be: UserMap.jpg, sample included in the download, file lives in the same directory as BUFRviewer.exe, image must be in Plate-Carree projection), include collection and display of a processing log, add control of border line and background colours, add gridlines, with colour and visibility control, add option for timestamp at the top left of the image, allow for spaces in the install and data paths, allow for locales where the decimal separator is a comma, add File, Save As, with JPEG and PNG format support, add simple fix for network files not working, add BUFRviewer.ini to define available regions (right-click the image to see your choices, you can edit this file by hand to add regions), add data thinning - right-click the image, accept -region-1 .. -region-5 etc. on command-line, accept -save:<path+filename> on command-line, accept -thin:5 on command line (values from 1 to 100), accept -close on command-line.
V1.0.1	Add WMO tables version 13 for Metop and ERS-2 ASCAT data since April 2009.
V1.1.2	Support UMARF 25km winds ( files named OASW025....), add left/right/auto feather direction for wind barbs, accept incorrectly-named QuikSat files, build with Delphi 2009.
V1.1.4	Different colours for winds at different pressure levels (with AMV & satwnd data only), accept -ARROWS and -BARBS command-line parameters to specify winds as arrows or barbs in batch mode, update for Jan-2010 KNMI data.

Download the BUFR Viewer V1.1.4 (2,913,732 bytes; 2010 Jan 11)
Join the SatSignal Yahoo group to discuss this software with other users

You can register the BUFR Viewer here. The program requires registration, and a 30-day trial period registration is built into the program.

Operating Notes

The program will try and decode the BUFR information in a file as wind vectors, in the first instance. The data will be saved as a text file named: _temp.txt in the program's directory. If you have problems with decoding data, please first check that the _temp.txt file appears to be correct. If it just contains a single header line, without any data, it's possible that the data you have chosen does not contain any wind information. For example, some of the scatterometer data is only available over the sea parts of the pass, not over land parts. The program will try and save the text file, in a slightly edited form, back in the data directory, so that running a data file:

ascat_20080525_080901_metopa_08291_eps_o_250_ovw.l2_bufr

would produce a new text file:

ascat_20080525_080901_metopa_08291_eps_o_250_ovw.l2_bufr.txt

in the same directory. If the program cannot write to the data directory, the file will need to undergo the decoding process each time. The text version of the data file will be displayed in the Properties tab.

Please note that due to limitations of the decoder software, this program will not work for some data types if it is installed in a directory which has spaces in the directory name. Therefore please do not install it in the "C:\Program Files" directory tree.

EUMETCast updates

Some of this data is sent over the SAF-Europe data channel in EUMETCast, so to receive it you may need to add lines like:

[SAF-Europe]
target_directory=received

to your recv-channels.ini file. You should point the target_directory at the same directory which the MSG Data Manager uses (i.e. the common directory you use for EUMETCast data). Add one line for each data channel you wish to receive.

Debugging notes

As this program is still in the early stages of developments, it is possible that you may need to debug the operation of the decoders which this program uses. To do so, build up a command file named, for example, _test.cmd, with contents like the example below, but with the directories altered to suit your own system.

CD "C:\Tools\David J Taylor\BUFRViewer\"
SET BUFR_TABLES=C:/Tools/David J Taylor/BUFRViewer/
Bufr2Asc.exe  "D:\MSG\Images\SCAT\2008\06\13\ascat_20080613_184801_metopa_08568_eps_o_250_ovw.l2_bufr"  _temp.txt

Note the need for file and directory names containing spaces to be enclosed in quotation marks ("). Please discuss the results on the SatSignal Yahoo group.