Scientific report

9-10th of March 2011

The purpose of this meeting is to test preliminary versions of the Action's software and make recommendations for future development.

Main options are in place :

Data reading, writing procedures

Output visualization

Neighbourhood selections

Detection (pairwise, multivariate detection)

Correction (ANOVA)

We decided that more homogenization options will be included:

  • ACMANT detection procedure, based on bivariate annual detection (Domonkos, Mestre)
  • improved visualization procedures for input data, based on CLIMATOL (Guijarro)
  • improved ANOVA estimation using Generalized Least Squares procedures (Mestre)
  • include UBRIS trend correction method
  • discussions also arose for detection on serial deseasonalised monthly data (Aguilar)
  • provide a way to skip data that cannot be homogenized (to few neighbours)

Concerning ergonomy, at present, the user interface is based on menus and command prompts. A GUI will be developed, to improve friendliness of the software. It will be based on R version of TCL/TK; examples can be found in Rclimdex or Extremes procedures.

Additional features were discussed:

  • general options should be set at the beginning of the programme and have default options
  • options for various graphic output formats : pdf, eps, png;
  • more informative warning messages;
  • comparison model option should be more explicit;
  • more input checks to avoid user mistakes;
  • additional checks: for example issue a warning when altitude of stations differs too much inside the neighbourhood; check for duplicates in the data, format of the data
  • interactive QC for outliers removal;
  • abnormal termination managing function (try, catch, options(error=managing function));
  • possibility for input metadata, drawing their position with different symbols;
  • format conversion function from original format to new format
  • possibility to draw maps
  • improve interactivity of graphic inputs (detection windows : metadata file, real time updates of modifications, save previous version in backup file. Use file.exists to track different version numbers)
  • save some objects directly as lists
  • use the «edit» function to modify text file outputs
  • small bug to be fixed: do not ask for header when exiting without having done nothing;

Other issues discussed were:

  1. future meetings
  • WG5 meeting, September 2011, hosted at AEMET (Mallorca) prior to software training courses: final bug reports, final testing of the software. Exact date and place of training schools will be set later; Petr Stepanek and Enric Aguilar volunteered to organize them in Brno and Tarragona, in case , no other volunteers show up;
  • EM Domonkos/Mestre in May 2011, Toulouse;
  • possibility of EM Szentimrey/Cheval, for MASH implementation;
  • possibility of 1xSTSM for software testing;
  • WG4 meeting in June, Brno (CZ), to be announced and organized by our lovely Petr Stepanek, WG4 leader.
  1. Website

Finally, Alba Gilabert (URV-CAT) presented the new and much improved version of the website, developed using Joomla tool. Password management has been improved, so that retreiving password is much simpler now. Participants are strongly encouraged to provide more input to the website.