Tracking

The core of WAM2layers are the tracking routines. The model includes forward and backward tracking. Forward tracking takes evaporation over the tagging region as input and generates tracked precipitation as output. Backward tracking takes precipitation over the tagging region as input and generates tracked evaporation as output. Time tracking, distance tracking, and moisture recycling can be added in future updates.

Assuming you have a preprocessed dataset and prepared a configuration file for your experiment, running WAM2layers is as simple as:

wam2layers track config-file.yaml

where config-file.yaml is the path to your configuration file. Among others, this file should have settings on the tracking direction (forward/backward), the date range for which you want to run track, and also about the location where the preprocessed data are stored and where the output will be stored. For more information, see Case configuration or have a look at the example config file here.

Tip

The actual code that is executed can be found in src/wam2layers/tracking/backtrack.py or src/wam2layers/tracking/forwardtrack.py. This script reads the configuration, loads the preprocessed data step by step, calculates the proportion of tracked moisture in each grid cell, and writes the output to a file. You can configure how often output is written.

For more information on the equations being solved, see the theory chapter. If you want to know how the command line call ends up in this python script, see the section on WAM2layers’ command line interface