Vertical Profile

Basic Example

An example vertical profile requested via earthkit-data:

import earthkit.data

request = {
    "class": "od",
    "stream" : "enfo",
    "type" : "pf",
    "date" : -1,  # Note: date must be within the last two days 
    "time" : "0000",
    "levtype" : "pl",
    "expver" : "0001", 
    "domain" : "g",
    "param" : "203/133",
    "number" : "1",
    "step" : "0",
    "feature" : {
        "type" : "verticalprofile",
        "points": [[-9.10, 38.78]],
        "axes": "levelist",
        "range" : {
            "start" : 0,
            "end" : 1000,
        }
    },
    "format": "covjson",
}

ds = earthkit.data.from_source("polytope", "ecmwf-mars", request, stream=False, address='polytope.ecmwf.int')

The following will return a vertical profile from yesterday's 00Z forecast with levels from 0 to 1000 including all levels available in between, for the parameters 164/167/169 at the point given. This data will be returned for each ensemble number requested.

"polytope" refers to the underlying service being used to return the data. "ecmwf-mars" is the dataset we are looking to retrieve from. Setting stream=False returns all the requested data to us once it is available. address points to the endpoint for the polytope server.

Required Fields

For a vertical profile two fields are required within the feature dictionary

• type
• points

For a vertical profile type must be verticalprofile.

points must be a nested list with two points corresponding to a latitude and a longitude.

Optional Fields

axes refers to the axis on which to generate the vertical profile. In this case the vertical profile is generated across levelist based on the inputted range. In the vertical profile this field is optional as the default is assumed to be levelist if not given.

range is an optional field within feature. It refers to the extent of the axes on which the vertical profile will be generated. In the above case where:

    "axes": "levelist",
    "range" : {
        "start" : 0,
        "end" : 1000,
    }

A vertical profile across levelist will start at level 0 and end at level 1000 with all levels found in between being included. range can also contain interval.

    "axes": "levelist",
    "range" : {
        "start" : 0,
        "end" : 1000,
        "interval" : 2,
    }

In this case every second level will be returned if it exists.

As range is an optional field it can be left out, however there is not a default value. Instead the user has to include the vertical profile axes in the main body of the request like below:

request = {
    "class": "od",
    "stream" : "enfo",
    "type" : "pf",
    "date" : -1,
    "time" : "0000",
    "levtype" : "pl",
    "expver" : "0001", 
    "domain" : "g",
    "param" : "203/133",
    "number" : "1",
    "step" : "0",
    "levelist" : "0/to/1000",
    "feature" : {
        "type" : "verticalprofile",
        "points": [[38.9, -9.1]],
        "axes" : "levelist",
    },
}

This is equivalent to the first request presented.

At least one of range or levelist must be included in the request, but not both. In this case an error will be provided telling the user that levelist is overspecified.

Conversely at least one of range or levelist must be included.