About FLEXPART
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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.

FLEXPART is free software released under the GNU General Public License V3.0

It should be noted that there is a parallel project at www.flexpart.eu which has already addressed some of the issues below, the two projects have taken different directions in the development.


FLEXPART_WRF
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FLEXPART v 6.xx was adapted by Jerome Fast of PNNL to work with the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model. The source code and utilities provided here are based on FLXPART_WRF.  Further details of FLEXPART_WRF can be found in the references listed below.

We aim to continue the work started by Jerome Fast and the FLEXPART WRF team to make the model work easily with WRF. Things that would need immediate attention are:

1. Inclusion of spatially varing Map factors
2. Making warm restart work

Partially supported features:
* NetCDF output format  - working for absolute fields but not yet for
                          standard deviation/errors
* Nested output data    - working for netcdf, not tested for ascii or
                          fortran binaries

Features considered working and stable:
* Wet deposition        - Now uses the same scheme as FLEXPART 9.0
                          however, it is quite heavy on disk access
                          which can be an issue when making many
                          parallell runs.


Provided below are some Ruby and NCL scripts that would ease working with
FLEXPART_WRF input and output. 

Directory Structure
-----------------


FLX_WRF - root of tar file

docs - contains flexpart-wrf.phase?.pdf (3 files - these
       + are documents from Jerome Fast, developer of FLXPART-WRF)

src_gfortran2 - contains source code of flexpart-wrf
                + some modifications were made so that it runs with
                + gfortran
                + modify Registry file of WRF source code and recompile
                + if necessary to output the following variables in
                + the wrfout_* files
                  ++ ALT, TKE, TKE_PBL, RAINC, RAINNC, CLDFRA
                  ++ RAINSH, SNOWNC, GRAUPELNC, HAILNC
                + the makefile is tailored for gfortran

SCEN1 - a directory showing sample invocation of FLXPART-WRF
      - also contains ruby scripts that can help construct the
      - the various files needed to run FLEXPART

SCEN1/plot - contains Ruby and C code to convert FLXPART output
           - to C binary
           - use parse_header.rb followed by "cat dims.check" to
           - determine NX, NY and NZ parameters defined in flexpart_helpers.h
           - make_inlist.rb creates input_list, an ascii file containing
             + names of input files that multi_r*_w.c files need to
             + to create a single C binary file containing concentration,
             + wet deposition or dry deposition output
           - make_inlist.rb also creates time_list that is needed
             + by plot/ncl/plot_conc.ncl

SCEN1      - run_flx.rb
             + Once all parameters are set, I use run_flx.rb
             + to help make production runs

SCEN1/plot/ncl - NCL scripts that I use to make plots

PlotLib_WRF - set the path to this directory as the shell environment
              variable WRF.

References
--------------

Homepage of FLEXPART - http://transport.nilu.no/flexpart

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.

Doran, J.C., J.D. Fast, J.C Barnard, A. Laskin, Y. Desyaterik, M.K. Gilles, and R.J. Hopkins, 2008: Applications of Lagrangian dispersion modeling to the analysis of changes in the specific absorption of elemental carbon.  Atmos. Chem. Phys., 8, 1377-1389.

Fast, J.D., and R.C. Easter, 2006: A Lagrangian particle dispersion model compatible with WRF. 7th WRF Users' Workshop, NCAR, June 19-22, Boulder, CO, p6.2.