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Publication Date
23 May 2023

PyFLEXTRKR: a flexible feature tracking Python software for convective cloud analysis

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This paper describes the new open-source framework PyFLEXTRKR (Python FLEXible object TRacKeR), a flexible atmospheric feature tracking software package with specific capabilities to track convective clouds from a variety of observations and model simulations. This software can track any atmospheric 2D objects and handle merging and splitting explicitly. The package has a collection of multi-object identification algorithms, scalable parallelization options, and has been optimized for large datasets including global high-resolution data. We demonstrate applications of PyFLEXTRKR on tracking individual deep convective cells and mesoscale convective systems from observations and model simulations ranging from large-eddy resolving (∼100s m) to mesoscale (∼10s km) resolutions. Visualization, post-processing, and statistical analysis tools are included in the package. New Lagrangian analyses of convective clouds produced by PyFLEXTRKR applicable to a wide range of datasets and scales facilitate advanced model evaluation and development efforts as well as scientific discovery.

Feng , Zhe, Joseph Hardin, Hannah C. Barnes, Jianfeng Li, L. Ruby Leung, Adam Varble, and Zhixiao Zhang. 2023. “Pyflextrkr: A Flexible Feature Tracking Python Software For Convective Cloud Analysis”. Geoscientific Model Development 16 (10). Copernicus GmbH: 2753-2776. doi:10.5194/gmd-16-2753-2023.
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