ICRAR Weather Visualisation Web App

This repository contains a Flask-based web application for exploring near-surface weather observations from DPIRD stations and gridded forecasts from ECMWF over Western Australia. The core of the app lives in the FlaskApp directory.

The UI lets you:

• Load DPIRD station data and ECMWF operational forecast data (either from Acacia services or local NetCDF files).
• Visualise DPIRD variables on an interactive Leaflet map with a time slider.
• Plot DPIRD time-series graphs for a selected station.
• Visualise ECMWF scalar and wind fields over WA as either a heatmap or point/arrow layer.
• Overlay DPIRD and ECMWF in a unified "Both (Overlay)" mode with shared date configuration and colourbars.

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Running the app

1. Create and activate a Python environment (recommended):

   python -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate  # on macOS/Linux

2. Install dependencies (from the repository root, which contains requirements.txt):

   pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Start the Flask app from the FlaskApp directory:

   cd FlaskApp
   cd services
   
   # Just create a new file called app_config.yaml either via nano or via a GUI
   
   nano app_config.yaml # on macOS/Linux
   

   Enter the following text in the file: (required for accessing dataset from Acacia)

    key:
     ACCESS-KEY: ""
     SECRET-KEY: ""
   

   Run the app!

   python app.py
   

4. Open the app in a browser:

   • Navigate to http://127.0.0.1:5000/ (or the host/port shown in the terminal).

Optional: start with preloaded datasets

If suitable test NetCDF files are present under FlaskApp/uploads/ (for example DPIRD_final_stations_utc0.nc for DPIRD and 02.nc for ECMWF), you can start the app with preloaded data so the UI is ready to use immediately:

cd FlaskApp
python app.py -1

When started with -1, the backend loads those files at startup and the front-end initialises its controls from /initial_state without any manual upload or Acacia query.

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Typical workflow

Once the app is running:

1. Load data

   • Either use the Acacia query controls to load DPIRD and/or ECMWF for a date range, or
   • Upload local DPIRD and ECMWF NetCDF files via the respective upload panels.

2. Choose a mode using the "Active Control Panel" switch:

   • DPIRD – configure variable, date range, and optionally station; view map or graph.
   • ECMWF – choose ECMWF variable, date group, and time/step; view the forecast field over WA.
   • Both (Overlay) – use shared date configuration and select DPIRD + ECMWF variables to overlay.

3. Render

   • Click the relevant render button (e.g. Render DPIRD, Render ECMWF, or Render Both Layers).
   • Use the DPIRD timeline slider and playback control to scrub through time.
   • In ECMWF and Dual modes, use the ECMWF time/step sliders (and opacity control in Dual) to explore the forecast field.

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Notes

• The app focuses on Western Australia by applying spatial masks in the backend.
• For ECMWF wind variables, the backend derives wind speed and direction from u/v components and exposes them as synthetic windXX variables.
• DPIRD combined wind (wind_3m) is supported in map mode and split into speed/direction components for graph mode.
• The dual overlay mode can use a shared colourbar when DPIRD and ECMWF variables are compatible (e.g. air temperature vs 2 m temperature).