We developed a Fortran program which reads BUFR files containing scatterometer data from SeaWinds, ERS, ASCAT or Oceansat-2. The wind data is written to an ASCII output file. The software, which will run on most Unix/Linux platforms, can be downloaded here. The tar file contains some Readme files describing the installation of the package.

The software makes use of the ECMWF BUFR library (any version from 000240 to 000370) which must be downloaded separately from their website (see related link).

If you don't have Fortran and C compilers available, it is possible to download the free G95 and GCC compilers (see related links). Windows users should consider to use the free Cygwin Linux emulator (see related link). Fortran 90 code version 29 Aug 2011 (110 kB) Use the following commands to install and test this tool on Unix/Linux:

• Unpack and step into the genscat directory
  gunzip bufr_reader_20110829.tar.gz
  tar -xf bufr_reader_20110829.tar
  cd bufr_reader/genscat/
• Read the Readme.txt files
  more Readme.txt
  more support/bufr/Readme.txt
• Install the downloaded ECMWF BUFR library source code
  cp your_download_location/bufr_000XXX.tar.gz support/bufr
• Compile
  source use_g95.csh or . ./use_g95.bsh (depending on your compiler and shell, see also Notes 2 and 3 below)
  ./Set_Makeoptions
  make
• Set environment variable
  setenv BUFR_TABLES your_location/genscat/support/bufr/bufr_tables/
  or
  export BUFR_TABLES=your_location/genscat/support/bufr/bufr_tables/ (depending on your shell)
• Step to bufr2asc and test the program
  cd tools/bufr2asc
  ./Bufr2Asc ../../support/bufr/testreading.bufr ./result.asc
  more result.asc
  
  

Note 1: the software is tested with ECMWF BUFR library versions 000240 to 000370. Newer versions may work as well, but are not tested by us.

Note 2: the use_*.csh or use_*.bsh scripts select which compiler is used. If you do not run this script the default f90 command is used. If this does not work for you, or no script is available for your compiler, you may edit the generated Makeoptions file in bufr_reader/genscat after running ./Set_Makeoptions and specify which compiler and compiler options should be used. These settings will only affect the KNMI Fortran code, not the ECMWF BUFR library code.

Note 3: if you use a use_*.bsh script, be sure to type ". ./use_*.bsh", i.e. "dot space dot slash use_*.bsh", otherwise the necessary environment variables will not be exported.

Note 4: if you adapted the Makeoptions file and installed succesfully on your system, please let us know. This allows us to help others by providing a suitable use_*.csh/use_*.ksh script. Please contact the KNMI scatterometer team.