EMS Annual Meeting Abstracts
Vol. 20, EMS2023-684, 2023, updated on 06 Jul 2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2023-684
EMS Annual Meeting 2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

thundeR - a rawinsonde package for processing convective parameters and visualizing atmospheric profiles

Mateusz Taszarek1, Bartosz Czernecki1, and Piotr Szuster2,3
Mateusz Taszarek et al.
  • 1Department of Meteorology and Climatology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
  • 2Department of Computer Science, Cracow University of Technology, Krakow, Poland
  • 3Department of Computer Science, AGH Cracow University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland

ThundeR is a freeware R language package for sounding and hodograph visualization, and rapid computation of convective parameters commonly used in the research and operational prediction of severe convective storms. Core algorithm is based on C++ code seamlessly integrated into the R language within the RCPP library. This solution allows to compute a large number of thermodynamic and kinematic parameters within hundredths of a second per atmospheric profile. Such performance enables to process large numerical datasets such as reanalyses or weather prediction models for the research and operational purposes. ThundeR package has been developed since 2017 and is constantly updated with new features and parameters following requests from the community and the most up to date research findings on severe storm environments. The most recent version of the package (v1.1) allows users to calculate 201 parameters, manually specify mixing and altitude of a convective parcel, input a manual storm motion vector, and control plotting of CAPE, CIN, DCAPE and SRH polygons. An online tool available at www.rawinsonde.com allows users to use thundeR package in visualizing rawinsonde measurements and historical atmospheric profiles from ERA5 reanalysis since 1950. As of January 2023, thundeR package has been used in more than 20 peer-reviewed studies.

How to cite: Taszarek, M., Czernecki, B., and Szuster, P.: thundeR - a rawinsonde package for processing convective parameters and visualizing atmospheric profiles, EMS Annual Meeting 2023, Bratislava, Slovakia, 4–8 Sep 2023, EMS2023-684, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2023-684, 2023.