A python package to process cloud and precipitation particle probe data.

Author: Nick Guy (nick.guy@noaa.gov)

Created: 21 Jan 2014
Updated: 14 May 2014 – Restructured functions and pathways
Updated: 15 Jul 2014 - Refactored to take class structure. Heavily influenced by the PyDisdrometer package by Joseph Hardin.
Updated: 4 Aug 2014 - Implemented a number of housekeeping changed by Joseph Hardin to allow the possible future merge with the PyDisdrometer package.

As of now, I have used these as a standalone package that was not installed as a package. To access, I just added the path where the folder was unpacked to my PYTHONPATH environmental variable path (in my .bashrc file)

e.g. export PYTHONPATH=/Users/nickguy/programs/python/pythonlib:/Users/nickguy/programs/python/pythonlib/pyparticleprobe

There is a setup.py file provided, HOWEVER this may not work properly and I would suggest using the above method to access the package until the software becomes more mature.

Initiate class by opening a file. There are a number of optional arguments that help in processing the file. As of now these attributes are tailored to files created after processing the CIP/PIP probes aboard the NOAA P-3 aircraft.

import pyparticleprobe

dsd = pyparticleprobe.read_file(filename)

To add additional analyis information:

dsd.get_bin_parameters() # Bin the data over diameters bin

dsd.get_ts_parameters() # Bin the data over each time step

dsd.get_model_parameters(modelName='gamma_ua98') # Get the model fit parameters, default uses gamma model as in Ulbrich and Atlas (1998)

This library borrow heavily from the PyDisdrometer package. Therefore it uses the typical scientific python stack. Development used the Anaconda distribution (1.9.1 & Python 2.7.7).

It also requires the PyTMatrix Package for scattering calculations.

This code is in beta format and was designed to work with data from the NOAA P-3 aircraft that has been processed (by the University of California, Santa Cruz). It should be extendable to other probe data, but will need to have a new reader if file structure is different.

Future enhancements will hopefully include the ability to read other data files.
Also, the plotting portion depends on a local library on my machine and therefore won't work. This will eventually be changed to allow some plots to be produced.