User Guide
Get started
The PIKART catalog can be downloaded from the Data section. To avoid misuse, we advise everyone to carefully study the documentation provided here and read the publication introducing the PIKART catalog [ref/link].
The PIKART catalog has been developed “in-house” and is not intended for commercial use (license:…). As such, it may contain errors or inefficiencies. We gladly welcome users to provide critical feedback, contributions and suggestions (for example through the “raise Issue” feature on Github (link)).
How to use the PIKART catalog
We provide a Lagrangian and a Eulerian version of the PIKART catalog.
In the Lagrangian version of the PIKART catalog, each AR track is regarded as an individual entity and assigned a track ID. We as observers travel along with each AR. We can define AR trajectories as continuous sets of AR shapes that have been assigned the same identity. Consequently, this version takes an “AR track-centric” perspective, listing ARs in a typical catalog-like fashion:
table with the data format
Some AR properties can only be recorded from this perspective: for instance, only if we continuously consider individual AR identities, we can check whether they penetrate inland. The Lagrangian perspective is well-suited to study AR transport properties and lifecycle characteristics. We provide the following AR features in this version of the catalog:
table with Lagrangian AR properties
In the Eulerian version of the PIKART catalog, AR identities are not considered. We take a geographically localized perspective: as an observer, we reside at a specific location and just record whether this location is affected by “AR conditions”. As long as these conditions persist continuously, we record this as an “AR event”.
This version takes a “location-centric” perspective, listing ARs in a four-dimensional field/matrix:
table with the data format
AR levels are provided within the Eulerian framework, in agreement with the employed scale [ref]. The Eulerian perspective is often more appropriate for the study of local AR impacts and hazards. Overall, the following AR features are contained in this version of the catalog:
table with Eulerian AR properties
While the 4D-field of track IDs is actually integrating information from both perspectives, we still provide it as such along the other purely Eulerian features. For a direct hands-on start with both versions of the catalog, we provide a Jupyter notebook (link).
Current limitations
The PIKART catalog is a data product that we continuously develop further. Current limitations that we are aware of include:
- poles
- meridian/symmetry issues
- no implementation of AR-induced rainfall
- ….
How to generate your own version of the PIKART catalog
The full pipeline that was designed to generate the PIKART catalog contains numerous parameters. The most important ones are listed here:
- …
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If you would like to modify some of these parameters in order to generate your own version of the PIKART catalog, we provide well-documented Python source code via this publicly available repository (link). Please consider the following:
- The total execution time of running the full PIKART pipeline takes XXXh on a XYZ machine.
- Changing critical parameters may alter the resulting catalog in an unphysical way. Hence, we cannot guarantee for the validity of any findings that are inferred from modified versions of the PIKART catalog.
- ….
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