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Quickstart

This Quickstart guides you through running the provided example simulations that come with JURASSIC. The goal is to verify that the model is correctly installed and to familiarize yourself with the basic workflow of a JURASSIC radiative transfer simulation.

Prerequisites

This guide assumes that:

  • JURASSIC has been successfully compiled
  • All required runtime dependencies are available
  • You are working in a shell environment on a Linux or HPC system

Detailed installation instructions are provided in the Installation section of the user manual.

Running the example simulations

JURASSIC includes a set of example projects that demonstrate typical use cases and serve as regression tests. These projects are located in the projects directory.

cd jurassic/projects

Two example observation geometries are provided:

  • Nadir sounding, representative of satellite instruments viewing the atmosphere from above
  • Limb sounding, representative of instruments observing along the atmospheric limb

Nadir sounder example

To run the nadir sounder example:

cd nadir
./run.sh

Limb sounder example

To run the limb sounder example:

cd ../limb
./run.sh

Each example is executed via a simple wrapper script that prepares the input data, runs the radiative transfer calculations, and performs basic verification steps.

Input files

In both examples, the following input files are generated or used:

  • Observation geometry\ The file obs.tab defines the viewing geometry of the instrument, including sensor position and line-of-sight information.

    bash cat obs.tab

  • Atmospheric state\ The file atm.tab contains a standard mid-latitude atmospheric profile, including pressure, temperature, and trace gas concentrations.

    bash cat atm.tab

  • Radiative transfer configuration\ The file rad.tab specifies the detector channels and spectral configuration used for the radiative transfer calculations.

    bash cat rad.tab

These files illustrate the basic structure of JURASSIC input data and are discussed in more detail in the User Manual.

Output and verification

After the simulation completes, JURASSIC:

  • Computes radiances for two or three detector channels
  • Compares the results against reference data to verify correctness
  • Generates diagnostic plots of radiances and Jacobians using gnuplot

If the run completes without errors and the verification checks pass, your JURASSIC installation is functioning correctly.

Next steps

After completing the Quickstart, you may want to explore:

  • Customizing atmospheric profiles and observation geometries
  • Defining your own spectral bands and instrument configurations
  • Running JURASSIC on parallel HPC systems

These topics are covered in detail in the subsequent sections of the User Manual.

Further information

More detailed documentation for users and developers is available in the main JURASSIC documentation and in the GitHub wiki.

A detailed description of the JURASSIC model and its applications can be found in the publications listed in the References.

If you are interested in using JURASSIC for operational or research applications, please do not hesitate to contact us for support.