Using AtmoSwing

AtmoSwing can be used for different purposes:

  • in operational forecasting (the Forecaster),

  • to downscale climate data (the Downscaler),

  • to identify predictors for a certain predictand (the Optimizer).

For any use of AtmoSwing some data need to be prepared, and the method(s) must be calibrated. The following steps are usually required:

  1. Get a dataset for the predictor archive. It is often a reanalysis dataset. The impact of the choice of the dataset is discussed in Horton and Brönnimann [4].

  2. Get a dataset for the target situation (NWP output for operational forecasting or GCM/RCM outputs for climate downscaling)

  3. Format the predictand data.

  4. Calibrate/optimize the method using the Optimizer.

The datasets, predictor variables, number of analogy levels, spatial windows and most other parameters used for the analogue method are defined in the parameters files.