Overview

Flex_extract is an open-source software to retrieve meteorological fields from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Mars archive to serve as input files for the FLEXTRA/FLEXPART Atmospheric Transport Modelling system. Flex_extract was created explicitly for FLEXPART users who wants to use meteorological data from ECMWF to drive the FLEXPART model. The software retrieves the minimal number of parameters FLEXPART needs to work and provides the data in the explicity format FLEXPART understands.

Flex_extract consists of 2 main parts:

1. a Python part, where the reading of parameter settings, retrieving data from MARS and preparing the data for FLEXPART is done and
2. a Fortran part, where the calculation of the vertical velocity is done and if necessary the conversion from spectral to regular latitude/longitude grids.

Additionally, it has some Korn shell scripts which are used to set the environment and batch job features on ECMWF servers for the gateway and remote mode. See :doc:`Overview/app_modes` for information of application modes.

A number of Shell scripts are wrapped around the software package for easy installation and fast job submission.

The software depends on a number of third-party libraries which can be found in :ref:`ref-requirements`.

Some details on the tasks and program worksteps are described in :doc:`Overview/prog_flow`.

.. toctree::
    :hidden:
    :maxdepth: 2
    Overview/app_modes
    Overview/prog_flow