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Quickstart

A simple example is provided, illustrating how to simulate the dispersion of volcanic ash from the eruption of the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcano, Chile, in June 2011.

Example of an MPTRAC simulation

The example can be found in the projects directory. The projects directory can also be used to store results of other simulation and experiments with MPTRAC. The simulation is controlled by a shell script:

cd mptrac/projects/example
./run.sh

Please see the script run.sh on how to invoke MPTRAC programs such as atm_init and atm_split to initialize trajectory seeds and trac to calculate the trajectories.

The script generates a number of plots of the simulation output at different time steps after the eruption by means of the gnuplot graphing tool. These plots should look similar to the output already provided in the repository.

This is an example showing the particle output on 6th to 8th of June 2011:

MPTRAC particle output for Puyehue simulation

Additional project subdirectories

In addition to the example simulation, MPTRAC provides several utility scripts and resources in the projects/ directory to support your work:

  • projects/meteo/: Contains scripts for downloading meteorological input data from various data centers (e.g., ECMWF, NOAA), which are required for trajectory simulations.

  • projects/python/: Includes Python scripts to read, analyze, and visualize MPTRAC output data, such as air parcel trajectories and gridded fields. These can be helpful for creating custom plots and diagnostics.

  • projects/paraview/: Provides examples and guidelines for using ParaView to visualize MPTRAC air parcel data in an interactive 3D environment.

These directories offer helpful tools and examples for extending your use of MPTRAC beyond the basic workflow and adapting it to your specific research needs.

Further information

More detailed information for new users and developers of MPTRAC is provided in the user manual, the Doxygen manual, and in the GitHub wiki.

A detailed description of the MPTRAC model is provided in this paper:

Hoffmann, L., Baumeister, P. F., Cai, Z., Clemens, J., Griessbach, S., Günther, G., Heng, Y., Liu, M., Haghighi Mood, K., Stein, O., Thomas, N., Vogel, B., Wu, X., and Zou, L.: Massive-Parallel Trajectory Calculations version 2.2 (MPTRAC-2.2): Lagrangian transport simulations on graphics processing units (GPUs), Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 2731–2762, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2731-2022, 2022.

For a complete list of related publications and references, please visit the MPTRAC references page.

We are interested in sharing MPTRAC for operational and research applications. Please do not hesitate to contact us, if you have any further questions or need support.