A modern eddy-covariance software based on EC-PACK
The eddy covariance (also called eddy correlation or eddy flux) method is a key technique in meteorology and other atmosphere-related sciences and to measure vertical turbulent fluxes of heat, energy, and matter in the atmospheric boundary layer. It is based on analyzing statistical properties of high-frequency measuments of wind speed and scalar atmospheric properties (e.g. Temperature). These calculations are done by EC software like EC-Pet.
| EC-PeT’s eddy-covariance calculation is a fork of the well-known EC-PACK | |
| EC-PACK was originally developed at the Dutch weather service (KNMI) and the universities of Utrecht and Wageningen and is one of the most well established eddy-covariance softwares. It follows the approach of Lenschow et al. (1994) to assign an error value to each flux value calculated. | |
| quality control and assessment (QC/QA) scheme developed for TERENO | |
| The process QC/QA scheme incorporates the calculation of error flags after Vickers & Mahrt (1997), quality classes after Foken & Wichura (1996), a few other QC tests, assessment of the original EC-PACK errors (van Dijk et al.,2004), calculation errors after Finkelstein & Sims (2001), as well as target area matching algorithm, currently using the footprint model (Korman & Meixner, 2001). | |
| the name is a Latin backonym, as a references to the Roman history of Trier | |
| “elaboratio concursuum perturbationum Treverensis” is latin and roughly translates to elaboration of agreement in turbulences |
| EC-PeT code has been completely rewritten in Python, reducing it from 18.000 lines of FORTRAN to 9.000 lines of PYTHON. |
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| The code is entirely parallelized to take advantage of multiple processors. |
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| The software can be run either via command line interface (CLI) or completely headless, for fully automated use. |
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| For the ease of use and novice users the program offers as graphic user interface (GUI) allowing to control the most widely used funtions and setings: |
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| Some ease-of-use features are: automatic search for supported input files visual column-to-variable assignment automatic detection of time covered and data rate visual choice of instruments |
EC-PeT is open-source software European public license v1.2 and can be accessed by multiple ways:
DISCLAIMER
EC-PeT is released under the European Union Public Licence (EUPL-1.2) and is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind. The authors shall not be liable for any damages arising from the use of this software. Do not use this software for navigation purposes or in any situation where the life, health, or safety of any person depends on its accuracy or reliability. Use of EC-PeT is at your own risk.