The Grid Analysis and Display System (GrADS) is an interactive

desktop A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various compu ...

tool that is used for easy access, manipulation, and visualization of

earth science Earth science or geoscience includes all fields of natural science related to the planet Earth. This is a branch of science dealing with the physical, chemical, and biological complex constitutions and synergistic linkages of Earth's four spheres ...

data. The format of the data may be either binary, GRIB, NetCDF, or HDF-SDS (Scientific Data Sets). GrADS has been implemented worldwide on a variety of commonly used

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s and is freely distributed over the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

. GrADS uses a 4-Dimensional data environment:

longitude Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east- west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek lett ...

, latitude, vertical level, and time. Data sets are placed within the 4-D space by use of a data descriptor file. GrADS interprets station data as well as gridded data, and the grids may be regular, non-linearly spaced, Gaussian, or of variable resolution. Data from different data sets may be graphically overlaid, with correct spatial and time registration. It uses the ''ctl'' mechanism to join differing time group data sets. Operations are executed interactively by entering FORTRAN-like expressions at the command line. A rich set of built-in functions are provided, but users may also add their own functions as external routines written in any programming language. Data may be displayed using a variety of graphical techniques: line and bar graphs, scatter plots, smoothed contours, shaded contours, streamlines, wind

vector Vector most often refers to: * Euclidean vector, a quantity with a magnitude and a direction * Disease vector, an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism Vector may also refer to: Mathematics a ...

s, grid boxes, shaded grid boxes, and station model plots. Graphics may be output in

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...

or image formats. GrADS provides geophysically intuitive defaults, but the user has the option to control all aspects of graphics output. GrADS has a programmable interface (

scripting language In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automation, automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. A scripting language or script language is a programming ...

) that allows for sophisticated analysis and display applications. Scripts can display buttons and drop menus as well as graphics, and then take action based on user point-and-clicks. GrADS can be run in

batch mode Batch may refer to: Food and drink * Batch (alcohol), an alcoholic fruit beverage * Batch loaf, a type of bread popular in Ireland * A dialect term for a bread roll used in North Warwickshire, Nuneaton and Coventry, as well as on the Wirral, ...

, and the scripting language facilitates using GrADS to do long overnight batch jobs. As of version 2.2.0, graphics display and printing are now handled as independent plug-ins. A C-language Python extension for GrADS called GradsPy was introduced in version 2.2.1.

References

External links

GrADS official site

OpenGrADS official site

HiGrads - A GrADS script function library for managing subplots and charts
Earth sciences graphics software Free science software Graphic software in meteorology Meteorological data and networks {{sci-software-stub

See also

References

External links