Document Actions

FLEXPART

last modified 2009-11-07 22:31

The FLEXTRA and FLEXPART homepage at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research

FLEXTRA and FLEXPAR

About

The FLEXPART model is a Lagrangian Particle Dispersion Model developed at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research in the Department of Atmospheric and Climate Research. The model development team consists of Andreas Stohl - who originally wrote FLEXPART - Sabine Eckhardt, Harald Sodemann, and John Burkhart.

More information about the model can be found below or by sending requests to: flexpart-user@niflheim.nilu.no [SUBSCRIBE HERE]

Introduction

FLEXTRA and FLEXPART are an atmospheric trajectory and a particle dispersion model, respectively, that are used by a growing user community. A recent user survey resulted in 35 groups from 17 countries who have confirmed to actively use one of the models for a variety of research purposes. There are also a few operational installations for emergency preparedness and similar objectives. If you are using FLEXTRA or FLEXPART but are not on the list, please contact me and provide the relevant details.

FLEXTRA and FLEXPART can be driven with meteorological input data from a variety of global and regional models, most commonly from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). They run on a variety of Unix/Linux and PC platforms where a Fortran 77 compiler and a GRIB decoding library is installed. Applications of the models cover topics like transport of radionuclides after nuclear accidents, pollution transport, greenhouse gas cycles, stratosphere-troposphere exchange, water cycle research, and others, as shown by a list of publications for which FLEXTRA or FLEXPART were used.

Both models are freeware and can be downloaded from this webpage. I appreciate if the users can inform me on any installations. FLEXTRA is a mature code that currently isn't undergoing further development; however, FLEXPART is being developed continuously. Therefore, if useful model code or code for the pre/post-processing of the input/output data is developed, it would be nice if it could be shared with the FLEXTRA/FLEXPART user community. If you have code that you think others might find useful, you can also send it to me and I can put it on this webpage. Now the one FLEXPART can be used for ECMWF as well as GFS.Many people have contributed to the model development over the years, but special thanks for the most recent developments go to Caroline Forster who worked on the convection scheme of the new version 6.0, and who is also porting this version to use GFS data.

For a better understanding, read this first: Technical note: The Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART version 6.2

Download

FLEXTRA source code download

FLEXTRA V2.0
FLEXTRA V3.0b
FLEXTRA V3.1
FLEXTRA V3.2b
FLEXTRA V3.2c
FLEXTRA V3.2d
FLEXTRA V3.3
FLEXTRA V3.0 for MM5
FLEXTRA V3.0 for AVN
FLEXTRA V4.0 for GFS and ECMWF NEW

FLEXPART source code download

FLEXPART V3.0b
FLEXPART V3.1
FLEXPART V3.2
FLEXPART V4.0
FLEXPART V5.0
FLEXPART V6.0
FLEXPART V6.1
FLEXPART V6.2
FLEXPART V3.2 for GFS
FLEXPART V6.4 for GFS - thanks to Caroline Forster for this version!
FLEXPART V8.0 for GFS and ECMWF - potential for errors during data output, use V8.1!
FLEXPART V8.1 for GFS and ECMWF NEW, contains important bugfixes!

FLEXPART V3.1 for MM5 - inaccurate coordinate transformation, please use newer MM5 version
FLEXPART for WRF large file (440 MB) - many thanks to Jerome Fast for this development
FLEXPART V6.2 for MM5 - thanks to Petra Seibert und Paul Skomorowski NEW

Manuals

Routines for reading FLEXPART output files

Fortran routines for reading header and FLEXPART V8.x output files NEW

Routines for retrieval of FLEXTRA/FLEXPART input data from ECMWF

Version 1.0 routines for ECMWF data retrieval - kindly provided by Gerhard Wotawa and others
Version 2.0 routines for ECMWF data retrieval - kindly provided by Leopold Haimberger, building on work by Gerhard Wotawa and others
Version 2.1 routines for ECMWF data retrieval - kindly provided by Leopold Haimberger NEW, includes important bugfixes!

Additional library requirements

In order to run FLEXTRA or FLEXPART, you need to have a GRIB decoding library installed on your computer. The ECMWF GRIB_API (Version 1.7.0, GNU General Public License) is currently recommended for Flexpart 8.0 and later. The GRIB_API is required to work with current NCEP data in the new GRIB2 format and recommended for data in GRIB1 format. For backward compatiblity, the EMOS GRIB library can still be used to work with GRIB1 data. It is possible to download working GRIB versions from the UCAR website or from the ECMWF website. A good documentation of GRIB can be found here.

Referencing

Descriptions of FLEXTRA in the scientific literature are:

Stohl, A., G. Wotawa, P. Seibert, and H. Kromp-Kolb (1995): Interpolation errors in wind fields as a function of spatial and temporal resolution and their impact on different types of kinematic trajectories. J. Appl. Meteor. 34, 2149-2165.
Stohl, A., and P. Seibert (1998): Accuracy of trajectories as determined from the conservation of meteorological tracers. Q. J. Roy. Met. Soc. 124, 1465-1484.

Descriptions of FLEXPART in the scientific literature are:

Stohl, A., M. Hittenberger, and G. Wotawa (1998): Validation of the Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART against large scale tracer experiments. Atmos. Environ. 32, 4245-4264.
Stohl, A., and D. J. Thomson (1999): A density correction for Lagrangian particle dispersion models. Bound.-Layer Met. 90, 155-167.
Stohl, A., C. Forster, A. Frank, P. Seibert, and G. Wotawa (2005): Technical Note : The Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART version 6.2. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 5, 2461-2474.

Various specific components of the models that were implemented more recently can be found in other publications (see Andreas Stohl's publication list and the FLEXTRA and FLEXPART publication lists).

Andreas Stohl's Home Page

Atmospheric Transport

Sections