Climate data import tool

The Climate Data Import Tool provides a mechanism for rapidly and easily importing gridded daily rainfall or potential evapotranspiration (PET) data. It is particularly suitable for large catchments (eg. 50,000 km² to 500,000 km²).

For rainfall and PET data, run the pre-processor separately for each climate variable. This process ensures that one time-series does not overwrite the other.

Note: You should import grid-based climate data after you have set up the scenario and saved the project. The process can take a long time, depending on the number of files. If data is unavailable at the time of project creation, you can complete a scenario and add data at a later time.

To access the Climate data import tool (Figure 1):

After creating or loading your scenario, choose Edit » Rainfall-Runoff » Input Data... from the main menu to open the Edit Scenario Configuration dialog;
Choose Climate Data Import Tool from the Available methods drop down menu;
Choose the climate data type you want to import from the Elements drop down menu. You can import different climate data file formats for rainfall and PET;
Choose the type of data file format you want to load into the project from the File format drop down menu. Click Select to load the root folder containing the data files. (eg. C:\data\Silo\asciigrid);
If importing ASCIIGrid data files, define the search pattern (click the Search Pattern button). This informs the pre-processor of the last characters and extension of the climate data file name to be read. If the available search patterns offered are not suitable, you can edit the drop down menu by clicking in the text box and specifying the appropriate search pattern;
If importing ASCIIGrid data files, click Select to define a prototype raster, which should be *_rai.txt for rainfall and *_mwet.txt for PET files. For example, if a file is named 20070101_rai.txt, then the search pattern will be *_rai.txt. If a different file format is used, this step can be skipped;
Specify the Projection Information - this is the projection which the pre-processor assumes the sub-catchment map uses. Note that for importing ASCIIGrid files the projection of the DEM or sub-catchment map can be one of three (as shown in Figure 7). Click the Projection drop down menu;
Specify the Modelling Period (the time period over which you want to import) - the Start date and End date. Clicking on these dates opens the date picker;
Once all data has been entered, click Apply. A progress bar appears (as shown in Figure 9) indicating that data is being imported. This process can take several minutes depending on the amount of climate data present; and
Click OK to exit the tool and save your project.

Figure 1. Climate data import tool, input file types available

The output of this tool can now be used as a data source in the Data Sources Explorer as shown in Figure .

Note: When organising climate data into folders, make the folders as specific as possible. For example, if you only want to load one year of data (and you data is in sub-folder representing years), use the sub-folder for the year as the input folder. Likewise, try to split PET and rainfall files into different directories so the tool does not have to search all climate folders.