METEOROLOGICAL APPLICATIONS

Meteorol. Appl. 21: 360–368 (2014)

Published online 16 August 2012 in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/met.1345

MeteoInfo: GIS software for meteorological data visualization and analysis

Y. Q. Wang*
Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, China

ABSTRACT: MeteoInfo is a suite of software tools which has been developed for meteorological data visualization and
analysis. It includes a .NET class library for software developers and a desktop application for end users. MeteoInfo also
supports several basic GIS functions and can read widely several used meteorological data formats such as NetCDF and
GRIB. Complex meteorological analyses of grid and station data can be processed using provided data models. The class
library can be conveniently used to develop software routines for manipulating spatial and meteorological data. The desktop
application has a user friendly GUI and is a powerful tool to view and examine meteorological data sets. MeteoInfo can
also be run automatically using scripting with the IronPython language.

KEY WORDS meteorological data; visualization; GIS; class library

Received 16 January 2012; Revised 21 May 2012; Accepted 29 May 2012

1. Introduction hydrometeorological forecasting (Bell and Moore, 1998) and as

Meteorological and climatic data visualization and analysis are
essential for researchers and forecasters to understand and apply
these data. Such data are inherently spatially variable and hence
the use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) represents
a useful solution for the management of vast spatial meteoro-
logical and climatic datasets for a wide number of applications
(Chapman and Thornes, 2003). The powerful mapping capa-
bility of GIS is a primary factor that makes it attractive to
the atmospheric community (Ninyerola et al., 2000; Dyras and
Serafin-Rek, 2005; Shipley, 2005). Layer-based visualization
also supports the comparison of various aspects of a meteoro-
logical data set, and its spatial properties can be highlighted
by incorporating geospatial information in GIS. The abundant
position-based information and analysis functions on land sur-
faces of GIS, e.g. topographic analysis, land-use changes, urban
interface and water resources, make it useful for studying inter-
actions between the land surface and the atmosphere. For exam-
ple, topographic analysis based on GIS has significantly con-
tributed to improvements in the precipitation estimates derived
from Special Sensor Microwave/Imager data over the Tibetan
Plateau (Yin et al., 2004). Topographic analysis was also used
to enable a spatial and temporal analysis of road surface tem-
peratures across the West Midlands of England (Bradley et al.,
2002). Spatial analysis capabilities are another factor which
promote the use of GIS in the atmospheric community. For
example, geostatistical analyses in GIS have been widely used
in climate data interpolation (Lennon and Turner, 1995; Tveito
and Førland, 1999; Tveito et al., 2005; Ustrnul and Czekierda,
2005). Given these capabilities of GIS, it has been applied in
many facets of the meteorological field such as forecast model
verification (Feidas et al., 2007), air pollution prediction (Dai
and Rocke, 2000; Elbir, 2004; Hochadel et al., 2006), agromete-
orological zoning (Menkir et al., 2000; McKenney et al., 2001),
* Correspondence to: Y. Q. Wang, Chinese Academy of Meteoro-
logical Sciences, 46, Zhong-Guan-Cun South Avenue, Beijing 100081,
China. E-mail: yaqiang.wang@gmail.com; wangyq@cams.cma.gov.cn
an education tool (Shipley, 2006).
Although GIS strategies have become increasingly popu-
lar in meteorological applications (Dyras et al., 2005; Shipley,
2005), commercial GIS software packages are normally very
expensive and complex in operation for most users in meteo-
rological fields. Furthermore, they are not able to conveniently
deal with some popular meteorological data formats such as
GRIB and NetCDF. Consequently, the atmospheric science
community has developed several customized data visualization
and application tools such as Grid Analysis and Display Sys-
tem (GrADS), Ferret, and NCAR Command Language (NCL).
These tools normally use command-line interfaces and are not
closely linked with the GIS community. A climate mapping
tool (CMT) was developed for dealing with climate mapping
issues (Matuschek and Matzarakis, 2011), but its functions are
rather limited.
Development of components with GIS functions are also
useful for software developers to satisfy the spatial data view
and analysis demands in meteorological fields (Rebolj and
Sturm, 1999; Feidas et al., 2007; Tarhule et al., 2009; Wang
et al., 2009). Providing a programing library including both
GIS and meteorological data analysis functions would be a
benefit for software and application developers. Therefore, it
was considered a worthwhile endeavour to develop a free
component-based GIS software suite which can conveniently
visualize and analyse meteorological data by supporting most
of popular meteorological data formats and also provide basic
mathematical functions for grid and station data sets.
As an effort to promote incorporating GIS into meteorolog-
ical fields and to provide a free and effective software tool,
the MeteoInfo software package was developed. It uses C#
for applying GIS technology in meteorological data visual-
ization and analysis. MeteoInfo includes a .NET class library
for software developers and a desktop application for end
users. The capability for scripting is provided by includ-
ing IronPython. MeteoInfo is freely available on the website
http://www.meteothinker.com. Its core functionality and rele-
vance for meteorological analysis is presented here.

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Meteorological GIS software 361

2. Data models and supported data formats
2.1. Data models
The natural features of the atmosphere are in three spatial
dimensions (3D). Such features may change in time so four
dimensional data (4D, space and time) are normally used
in meteorological fields. In traditional GIS applications, this
dynamic and multi-dimensional space is usually abstracted as
static 2D (or 2.5D, such as Digital Elevation Models) objects by
means of orthogonal projection and planar tessellation. There-
fore, the existing GIS applications are limited in their ability
to represent the spatiotemporal dynamics of natural phenomena
(Burrough, 1996; Wilhelmi and Brunskill, 2003). The study of
dynamic and multi-dimensional GIS started in the mid 1980s.
Many spatiotemporal data models have been proposed, such
as the Snapshot Data Model (Armstrong, 1988), the Space-
Time Composite Data Model (Langran and Chrisman, 1988),
the Event-based Data Model (Peuquet and Duan, 1995), and the
Object-oriented Data Model (Worboys, 1992; Rapper and Liv-
ingstone, 1995). However, meteorological data modelling has
not been fully implemented in such spatiotemporal data mod-
els. Further research is needed to develop data models better
suited for meteorological data and to implement these models
in GIS software applications.
At present, a feasible and effective approach is to develop
a comprehensive software tool which has the ability to handle
both 4D meteorological data and traditional vector and raster
GIS data. In this case, the 4D meteorological data model and
2D/2.5D GIS data model are independent of each other as they
are implemented in separate data analysis functions. The link-
age between them is to create 2D/2.5D vector or raster layers
from the results of 4D meteorological data analyses. The cre-
ated GIS layers can be visualized and further analysed using
GIS spatial analysis methods.
2.2. Supported data formats
As meteorological GIS software, MeteoInfo was developed to
support several popular data formats used in the meteorological
Table 1. Supported meteorological data formats in MeteoInfo.
and GIS fields. ESRI shape file is a widely used geospatial
vector data format for GIS software which stores geometries
of point, polylines and polygons, and their associated attribute
information. MeteoInfo supports shapefile, the map data defined
in GrADS, and custom wmf map data. In addition to vector
data, the bmp, jpg, tiff, png and gif image data formats are also
supported by applying the geolocation world file.
Meteorological data formats currently supported by
MeteoInfo are listed in Table 1 with details about the data type,
file type, decoding level of difficulty, development organization
and primary users. The remainder of this section summarizes
these formats.
NetCDF is a set of software libraries and self-describing,
machine-independent data formats that support the creation,
access, and sharing of array-oriented scientific data. It is com-
monly used in climatology, meteorology and oceanography
applications, especially for four dimensional gridded data sets
from model output. Several conventions, e.g. Climate and Fore-
cast (CF) and Cooperative Ocean/Atmosphere Research Data
Service (COARDS), were adopted to promote the interchange
and sharing of files created with the NetCDF API. The format
is supported by many software packages, e.g. NCL, GrADS,
NCO (Zender, 2008) and ArcGIS. In MeteoInfo, NetCDF grid
data with CF conventions can be opened. NetCDF data from
WRF and CMAQ model output are also supported.
GRIB is a data format commonly used in meteorology to
store and exchange historical and forecast weather grid data.
It is standardized by the World Meteorological Organisation’s
(WMO) Commission for Basic Systems. Currently there are two
versions of GRIB in operational use. Data formatted according
to the first GRIB edition are slowly being converted over to the
second GRIB edition. GRIB is a self-describing binary format
and the data are packed to increase storage efficiency.
In the GrADS data format, raw binary data and metadata
are stored in separate files. The metadata file is called the data
descriptor file and contains a complete description of the binary
data as well as instructions for decoding tools such as where to
find the data and how to read it. The GrADS data format and

Data format Data type File type Decoding Development Users

difficulty level by

NetCDF Grid Binary Difficult, need Unidata Widely used, some

API library conventions are used by
atmospheric community
GRIB 1 and 2 Grid Binary Difficult WMO Atmospheric community
GrADS binary Grid and station Binary Moderate IGES Atmospheric community
HDF EOS5 Grid and swath Binary Difficult, need HDF group Satellite community
API library and NASA
ARL packed Grid Binary Moderate NOAA ARL ARL model users
HYSPLIT output Grid, station and Binary (grid and Easy NOAA ARL HYSPLIT model users
trajectory station) or text
(trajectory)
MICAPS Grid, station and Most are text Easy CMA Atmospheric community
trajectory in China
SYNOP Station Text Moderate WMO Atmospheric community
METAR Station Text Moderate ICAO Aviation and atmospheric
communities
NOAA ISH Station Text Moderate NOAA Atmospheric community
Longitude/latitude Station Text Easy MeteoInfo MeteoInfo users
station
ESRI ASCII grid Grid Text Easy ESRI ArcGIS users
Surfer ASCII grid Grid Text Easy Golden Software Surfer users

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362 Y. Q. Wang
the software were developed and maintained by the Institute of
Global Environment and Society (IGES).
HDF-EOS (Hierarchical Data Format – Earth Observing
Systems) is a self-describing file format based upon HDF for
transfer of various types of data between different machines. It
is a standard format to store data collected from EOS satellites.
HDF-EOS5 is based on the HDF5 data model.
ARL packed data format is used by the NOAA Air Resource
Laboratory. An ARL packed data file consists of a series of
fixed length records, one for each meteorological variable. The
records are arranged in a time series with surface fields followed
by upper air fields. Each record contains an ASCII header and
is followed by the packed binary data, one byte per gird point.
The HYSPLIT (Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated
Trajectory) model is popular for computing air mass trajectories
and complex dispersion simulations using input meteorological
data in the ARL packed data format (Draxler and Hess, 1998).
The output trajectory, concentration and particle data formats
are also supported in MeteoInfo.
MICAPS (Meteorological Information Comprehensive Anal-
ysis and Process System) is an operational data visualiza-
tion software tool for forecasters in the China Meteorological
Bureau (CMA). It defines many kinds of meteorological data
formats for surface or upper observations, model outputs, satel-
lite observations and typhoon pathways.
Several ASCII station data and grid data formats are also
supported by MeteoInfo to meet the demand of using simple
and human readable data under some conditions. SYNOP is
a numerical code, called FM-12 by WMO, used for report-
ing weather observations made by manned and automated
weather stations. METAR is an aviation routine weather
report with the description of the meteorological elements
observed at an airport at a specific time. It is highly stan-
dardized through the International Civil Aviation Organization
(ICAO). At present only the cycle METAR data of NOAA
(http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/metar.shtml) is directly sup-
ported by MeteoInfo. NOAA ISH is a worldwide database of
hourly and synoptic data. Longitude/latitude Station Data for-
mat is a custom station data format in MeteoInfo. Two ASCII
grid data formats are supported: ESRI ASCII Grid Data; and
Surfer ASCII Grid Data.
3. MeteoInfo class library components
The MeteoInfo .NET class library is the core of the software.
It includes the main components of multi-source data read-
ing/writing and analysis, layer management, rendering, projec-
tion, map and layout controls. The key namespaces and classes
of the library are shown in Figure 1. The assembly namespace is
MeteoInfoC, and includes the main namespaces of Data, Shape,
Layer, Map, Legend, Layout, Projection and Geoprocess. Each
of these namespaces is described in more detail below.
3.1. Data
The Data namespace has two sub-namespaces – MapData
and MeteoData. The MapData namespace includes classes to
manipulate traditional GIS data formats such as shape file, while
the supported meteorological data formats can be handled by
the classes in the MeteoData namespace.
The traditional four-dimensional data model is implemented
with the MeteoDataInfo class which includes data set informa-
tion objects. For example, to read a NetCDF data set, the user
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has first to create an object of MeteoDataInfo class, then use
the OpenNCData method to obtain the information in x, y, z
and time dimensions. Two or one dimensional grid data can be
obtained by the GetGridData method according to the dimen-
sion setting.
The data types mainly used in meteorological fields are grid
data and station data which are implemented by the classes of
GridData and StationData, respectively. The GridData class has
the members of one-dimensional x and y co-ordinate arrays, a
two-dimensional double data array and an undefined data value.
The StationData class has a two-dimensional array with the first
dimension containing x, y, and the data value, and the second
dimension containing the data point index. It also has a list
of station identifiers and an undefined data value. Both of the
data classes override the normal operators for data calculation.
A DataMath static class is also provided to implement com-
mon or special meteorological function operations for grid and
station data. It is similar to the raster analysis in conventional
GIS software, but it is done without pre-created raster layers.
Using these functions, several meteorological analyses are easy
to perform such as the calculation of wind divergence fields
from U - and V -components along x and y co-ordinates.
3.2. Shape and layer
Geometric objects available in MeteoInfo are the point, polyline
and polygon, which are implemented by the classes PointShape,
PolylineShape and PolygonShape, respectively.
Three layer types are included and are implemented by
VectorLayer, RasterLayer and ImageLayer classes. A vector
layer contains a set of shape objects of a certain type (i.e. point,
polyline or polygon) and the attribute records of the shapes. A
raster layer contains a grid data object which can be used for
further raster analysis. An image layer has an image object and
the respective geo-location parameters.
The key step in the integration of meteorological data sets
with GIS is to create layers from the data set. A grid data set is
usually displayed as a polyline or polygon vector layer through
contour analysis which is performed using the wContour class
library (Wang, 2011). The contour analysis is normally slow
for data with a large number of grid cells and in this case using
a raster layer is a preferred choice. There is a specific polyline
vector layer to represent streamlines generated by the wContour
library from U - and V -component grid data. A station data set
can be directly displayed as a point layer and can include the
types of wind arrow, wind barb and station model. Stations data
can be also displayed as a contour polyline or polygon layer
through interpolation and contour analysis of the data. Inverse
Distance Weighted (IDW) and Cressman interpolation methods
(Cressman, 1959) are provided by the wContour library (Wang,
2011). Attribute data are also assigned when shape objects are
created from meteorological data sets so that further analysis
with the attribute data is possible.
3.3. Map, layout, legend and projection
The three main user controls in the MeteoInfo library are
MapView, MapLayout and LayersLegend which are under the
namespaces of Map, Layout and Legend respectively. The
MapView control includes a list of layers and provides the ren-
dering functions to draw the layers in the control according
to their LegendScheme objects. This control uses the Win-
dows graphics device interface plus (GDI+) library which is
enabled to work with Linux-like systems based on Mono. The
Meteorol. Appl. 21: 360–368 (2014)

Meteorological GIS software
Data
Shape
Layer
MeteoInfoC
Map
Legend
Layout
Projection
Geoprocess
MIApp
Figure 1. Key namespaces and classes in the MeteoInfo class library. Namespaces are in rounded rectangles and classes are in square-cornered
rectangles.
LayersLegend control is used to organize layer management
such as changing layer properties and order. The MapLayout
control contains the components for the map, legend, scale
bar, north arrow and graphic for preparing publication quality
figures. The layer is rendered according to its legend scheme
object which uses the values of a field present in the layer’s
attribute table. Labels from the attribute table can also be ren-
dered in the MapView control. The MapView object is packed
in a MapFrame class which is an intermediate class between
the MapView and LayersLegend classes. Multiple MapFrame
objects are supported in the LayersLegend and MapLayout con-
trols so the library can manipulate multi-panel plots.
The projection code comes from DotSpatial which is an
open source .NET GIS project (http://dotspatial.codeplex.com/)
released under GNU (GNU’s Not Unix) Lesser General Public
License, in which the Proj4 C code is transferred to C# for the
most commonly used projections (Dunsford, 2010). Based on
the projection functions, on-the-fly projection ability has been
implemented in the MapView control; this capability is essential
for meteorological data viewing.
3.4. Geoprocess
The spatial analysis capabilities of MeteoInfo are implemented
through different approaches. Spatial interpolation and contour
analysis algorithms are provided in the wContour library.
Grid and station data calculation functions are included in
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363
MapData ShapeFile, ...
NetCDF, ...
MeteoData
MeteoDataInfo
GridData, StationData
DataMath
PointShape, PolylineShape, PolygonShape
VectorLayer, RasterLayer, ImageLayer
MapView
LayersLegend, LegendScheme, MapFrame
MapLayout
GeoComputation
the MeteoData namespace. The GeoComputation class in the
Geoprocess namespace was developed to handle certain other
spatial analyses of vector data such as the evaluating whether
a point resides in a polygon, clipping of geometric objects, and
length and area calculations.
3.5. Software development using MeteoInfo class library
The basic GIS and meteorological data management functions
can be called easily from the MeteoInfo library to develop
meteorological data viewing and analysis software further. For
example, TrajStat, an air mass back trajectory statistical analysis
tool (Wang et al., 2009), was re-developed based on the library
with new capabilities for meteorological data views, on-the-fly
projection, and map layout.
To demonstrate the usage of the library, a demonstration
program was developed using C# in Microsoft Visual Studio
2008 Express Edition. The source code of the demonstration
program and the library help documentation are provided on
the website (http://www.meteothinker.com).
4. MeteoInfo desktop application and scripting
4.1. Desktop application
The MeteoInfo desktop application was developed based on
the MeteoInfo class library for users to manipulate multi-source
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364 Y. Q. Wang
meteorological data interactively. The main user interface of the
desktop application includes the general sections: menu; tools;
status; layer management; map and layout visualization; and
a meteorological data management dialogue (Figure 2). Layer
properties and order can be controlled in the layer management
section. The layers are plotted in the map section according
to the order and legend setting. Users can adjust the map,
title, legend, illustration and graphic components in the layout
section before outputting the plot. Zooming and panning tools
can be used in the map plot. The vector layers also have
attribute data which can be identified using the ‘Identifier’ tool
and the layers can be labelled by the attribute data accessed by
fields. Users can interactively draw new graphics (point, label,
line, polygon and rectangle) using the drawing tools provided
by the application. A ‘Measurement’ tool is also provided to
calculate the length or area of the selected or user-plotted
polyline or polygon objects.
Meteorological data with the supported formats can be
opened in the meteorological data dialogue and the informa-
tion about dimensions and variables are read out. The default
dimension setting is x/y or longitude/latitude so the meteo-
rological plot can be overlaid on map layers. The other two
dimensions can be fixed by setting ‘Time’ and ‘Level’ options
in the dialogue as well as a variable which needs to be selected.
A simple math parser function is included so users can define
a new variable by inputting a formula that operates on exist-
ing variables. For example, Figure 2 shows a new wind speed
variable created from existing ‘uwnd ’ and ‘vwnd ’ variables.
For grid data, the drawing types of contour, shaded, grid fill,
grid point, vector, barb, streamline and raster are available. A
polyline or polygon layer is created by contour analysis of the
grid data using contour or shaded options. With the grid fill,
grid point or raster options, the grid data will be presented
as a polygon, point or raster layer without contouring. The
raster option is a much faster option than the other options for
grid data with a large number of cells. Two grid data sets of
Figure 2. Main user interface of the MeteoInfo desktop application. The plot also shows the layers created from grid data. This figure is available
in colour online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/met
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U - and V -components are needed for the wind vector, barb and
streamline options. The application will try to identify the U
and V variables automatically according to their names or users
can assign them manually. Figure 2 shows an example of the
layers wind barb, streamline and wind speed (shaded) created
from a grid data set.
Section plot functions are provided in the meteorological
data dialogue so data with dimension settings other than x/y
can be plotted. Two-dimensional grid data can be obtained
with two ranged dimensions and the other two dimensions
fixed. For example, Figure 3(a) shows a shaded plot with
range dimensions of z/y or level/latitude. One-dimensional
data can be obtained when only one dimension is ranged and
the other three dimensions are fixed (Figure 3(b)). The one-
dimensional plot is implemented with the ZedGraph library
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/zedgraph).
A point layer can be created from station data. Station
model, wind vector and barb, and weather symbol layers can
be generated if the station data set includes some of the normal
meteorological variables such as temperature, wind direction,
wind speed, cloud cover and weather phenomena (Figure 4).
The visible status of each shape in the station model layer
is automatically set according to the view extent of the map
to ensure the shapes will not overlap. Interpolation functions
(IDW and Cressman methods) can be used for interpolating
station data to grid data and then a contour or shaded layer can
be created. For example, Figure 4 shows a shaded precipitation
layer created from a station data set.
A layout arrangement sample is also presented in Figure 4.
The projections normally used in meteorological fields can be
set in the projection setting dialog for on-the-fly map projection.
For example, in Figure 4 the layers were projected into Lambert
Conformal projection. Longitude/latitude grid lines and labels
can be plotted automatically in the layout section. The legend,
plot title, scale bar and north arrow were also added. A map
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Meteorological GIS software 365

Figure 3. (a) Sample two-dimensional section plot and (b) one-dimensional plot. This figure is available in colour online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/
journal/met

of the South China Sea area was plotted using the multi-
MapFrame function. Users can set a polygon layer as a mask-
out layer so that only the contents inside the polygon shapes
are visible. For example, in Figure 4 the precipitation shaded
layer was masked out by a China administration layer.
Trajectory data, e.g. an air mass trajectory or a typhoon path,
can be plotted as a polyline or point layer to view the pathway
and the properties at each node point. Users can plot a weather
analysis or forecast map by using the drawing tools. The data
are presented as various layers which make it easy to elucidate
and compare the various properties of the data set.
The functions of clipping and selection by attributes and/or
location support further spatial analysis of geometric objects in
vector layers. For example, the meteorological stations located
in a given district represented by a polygon object can be
selected from a larger network of stations. Shaded polygons
analysed by contouring a meteorological data set can be clipped
by the given district and the areas of the clipped polygons inside
the district can be calculated.
4.2. Scripting
The ability to write scripting programs for data analysis
and automatic execution is quite important for managing
large data sets and for daily operational work. The script-
ing capability also provides much greater flexibility for data
analysis. A commonly used scripting language, IronPython
(http://ironpython.codeplex.com/) has been incorporated into

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366 Y. Q. Wang
Figure 4. Sample plot from station data. The plot is projected with Lambert Conformal projection and arranged in the layout interface. This
figure is available in colour online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/met
MeteoInfo to promote ease of use. IronPython brings together
the elegant Python programming language and the powerful
.NET platform. Common Language Runtime (CLR) forms the
core execution engine of the .NET platform. Along with the
runtime code there come a vast array of libraries and classes
which are collectively known as the framework classes. Iron-
Python is a full .NET language and almost all features of the
.NET platform can be used. To use the classes of .NET, users
first need to import CLR and then add references to the .NET
assembly in a scripting program. The MeteoInfo class library
can also be referenced by CLR so its classes and functions can
be called for meteorological data analysis and plotting. To sim-
plify the scripting program, a MIApp class including commonly
used functions, is provided (Figure 1).
A typical MeteoInfo scripting program may contain the
following steps:
1. import CLR and reference the MeteoInfo class library;
2. create a MIApp object;
3. load map layers;
4. open a meteorological data set;
5. set dimensions;
6. obtain grid or station data;
7. perform calculations on the data;
8. create a layer from the resulting data;
9. arrange the layout components, and,
10. output the data or figure.
The IronPython engine is included in the MeteoInfo release
package so the scripting program can be run by the ‘MIS-
cript.exe’ command without requiring IronPython to be pre-
installed. Figure 5 shows a scripting result for a water vapor
flux divergence field calculated from the grid data of tempera-
ture, U and V wind components and relative humidity.
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5. Conclusion
MeteoInfo is a free and comprehensive software package which
is used for meteorological data visualisation and analysis.
It includes a .NET class library, a desktop application, and
the capability for users to write scripting programs using the
IronPython language for complex data analysis and automatic
execution. The class library contains some basic components
of a GIS system and can be used in software development
as a simple GIS library. Many popular meteorological data
formats are supported by the library and data models have
been implemented to manage meteorological and GIS data
sets. The meteorological data model also provides the ability
for complex meteorological analysis using grid and station
data. GIS layers can easily be created from the meteorological
data set according the data properties and are supported by
the wContour library. These attributes make MeteoInfo a step
forward towards bringing GIS into meteorological fields.
The MeteoInfo desktop application has been developed
based on the MeteoInfo class library with a well arranged
GUI which helps improve the efficiency of visualizing and
understanding the properties of various meteorological data
sets. The different aspects of the data set can be extensively
viewed with the dimensional and drawing setting options. The
layout interface provides the ability to generate high-quality and
publication-ready plots. The scripting ability with IronPython
language makes MeteoInfo a powerful tool for data analysis
and automatic operation. MeteoInfo can be run on the Windows
platform with. Netframework3.5 or on Linux-like systems with
Mono.
Looking forward, some meteorological data formats such as
NetCDF, GRIB and HDF-EOS are very complicated and the
library needs to be improved for better reading and writing
of such data sets. At present MeteoInfo contains only a few
traditional GIS spatial analysis functions, e.g. clipping and
Meteorol. Appl. 21: 360–368 (2014)

Meteorological GIS software
Figure 5. Sample plot showing a water vapour flux divergence field calculated from other parameters using the MeteoInfo scripting program.
This figure is available in colour online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/met
selecting by location. The analysis functions available for grid
data in the meteorological data models, including interpolation
and contouring, should also be implemented for the GIS raster
layer to improve the spatial analysis ability of raster data. More
spatial functions such as buffering and overlay are needed to
enhance the ability to analyse vector data.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by grants from the National Key
Project of Basic Research (2011CB403401), Key Project of
the National Science & Technology Pillar Program (Grant No.
2008BAC40B01) and CAMS project (2010Z002). I am grateful
to anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions
and comments. Thanks are also extended to Dr Jay Turner
(Washington University in St. Louis) for editing the manuscript.
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