ecape 0.0.5

Calculate the entraining CAPE (ECAPE) of a parcel.

ecape

ecape is a simple module that contains an entraining CAPE, or ECAPE, calculation described by Peters et. al. 2023. Additionally, Peters-provided MatLab scripts serve as a reference and test verification data. The module leans heavily on MetPy for meteorological calculations.

Installation & Use

In console:

pip install ecape

See the example in linked documentation.

   from ecape.calc import calc_ecape
   ...
   ecape = calc_ecape(height, pressure, temperature, specific_humidity, u_wind, v_wind, cape_type)

Documentation & Source

https://github.com/citylikeamradio/ecape

https://citylikeamradio.github.io/ecape

Contact

• Robert Capella
• [e-mail]
• https://twitter.com/minusthebob

Questions, comments, and feedback are certainly welcome. This project is a personal exercise in learning how to publish packages to Github & PyPI, so excuse the excessive documentation for one function.

Future Work

• if useful, incorporate into MetPy
• provide cli .nc, .csv, & aws support

Disclaimer

There is a ~10% difference in ECAPE between calc_ecape and Peters' published matlab scripts. This is primarily due to a difference in calculated CAPE. The tests describe other sources of error (~1%).

Since:

• the methods here are within ~1% of Peters' calculations when CAPE is equivalent in the sample data
• Peters et. al. specifically mention MetPy for determining CAPE
• MetPy is a reliable, open-source, and frequently used meteorological calculation package

MetPy's CAPE calculations were chosen for ease of readability and implementation.

References

Ryan M. May, Sean C. Arms, Patrick Marsh, Eric Bruning, John R. Leeman, Kevin Goebbert, Jonathan E. Thielen, Zachary S Bruick, and M. Drew. Camron. Metpy: a Python package for meteorological data. 2023. URL: Unidata/MetPy, doi:10.5065/D6WW7G29.

John Peters. ECAPE scripts. 2 2023. URL: https://figshare.com/articles/software/ECAPE_scripts/21859818, doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.21859818.v4.

John M. Peters, Daniel R. Chavas, Hugh Morrison, Chun-Yian Su, and Brice E. Coffer. An analytic formula for entraining cape in mid-latitude storm environments. 2023. arXiv:2301.04712.

Licence

ecape is distributed under the terms of the MIT license.