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ampycloud demo diagnostic diagram

Fig. 1 The ampycloud diagnostic diagram for its canonical mock dataset.

Welcome to the ampycloud documentation

  • What: ampycloud refers to both a Python package and the algorithm at its core, designed to characterize cloud layers (i.e. height and sky coverage fraction) using ceilometer measurements (i.e. automatic cloud base hits), and derive a corresponding METAR-like message. A visual illustration of the algorithm is visible in Fig. 1.

  • Where: ampycloud lives in a dedicated repository under the MeteoSwiss organization on Github, where you can submit all your questions and bug reports. See Troubleshooting for more details.

  • Who: ampycloud is being developed at MeteoSwiss. See also the code’s license & copyright information.

  • How: a scientific article describing the ampycloud algorithm is currently in preparation. This article will be complemented by these webpages, that contain the official documentation of the ampycloud Python package.

Scope of ampycloud

Important

ampycloud is a key dependency of the automatic METAR-generating code of MeteoSwiss, which requires all its dependencies to be robust and stable.

This has the following implications for ampycloud:

  • The scope of ampycloud will remain limited to the automatic processing of ceilometer hits. In particular, ampycloud does not process Vertical Visibility (VV) measurements. Depending on the ceilometer type, the user will need to decide how to treat VV hits before passing them to ampycloud, e.g. by removing them or by converting them to cloud base heights.

  • ampycloud can evidently be used for R&D work, but the code itself should not be seen as an R&D platform.

  • Contributions via Pull Requests are always welcome (and appreciated !), but will only be considered if they:

    • remove a bug, and/or

    • improve the usability of ampycloud without altering the quality of the results, and/or

    • demonstrate a significant improvement in the quality of the results.

  • The ingestion of external contributions may be delayed to allow for a careful, internal verification that they do not affect the MeteoSwiss operational chain that relies on ampycloud.

  • ampycloud is designed (and intended to be used) as a regular Python module. As such, it is not meant to interact (directly) with other programming languages. The implementation of a complex API to interact with “the outside World” (e.g. to feed data to ampycloud using the JSON format) is not foreseen.

  • ampycloud is not meant to handle/generate/derive CB/TCU codes. The module deals with “basic” cloud layers only.

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