[10月15日]晴天钟近况

　　同时兼顾两种语言真是麻烦，而问题是诸位懂英语，而老外不懂中文…… 哎，但为了各位阅读便利，因此还是要叙述一下最近的更新项目。

　　最近收到国内外许多朋友的来信，大多数是对晴天钟的赞赏，也提出了很多中肯的建议，值得注意的是有几位国内气象界老师（哎，敝人现在还在混学士学位呢，当然要尊称老师啦）的来信，提出了许多建议，敝人在此对深表谢意。做这些东西要耗费许多时间，有的时候还是挺枯燥，因此您的支持是最巨大的动力！

　　最近一共更新了三个项目：

1. APanel加上了lon/lat选项，这对于某些精细地形的预报会有帮助，但我没有把它拓展到中文版，因为国内好象也很少人使用这一功能；

2. 把俄罗斯的地点数据加上了，美国的也即将加上；

3. 天气图功能现在一直在调试，因此各位使用的时候很可能会有不少问题，敬请谅解。待调试完成以后，还将有许多预测参数会加上，相信对气象方面的老师及朋友会有更大帮助。

　　若有任何问题，可在此留言（留言需要本人审核，因此不能马上看见，请原谅），或给我发邮件：tom6740 [at] gmail.com。再次谢谢各位支持！

Site data for U.S.

Just another message for our U.S. friends that the conversion is in progress. As the data is too big (~260M — more than 3 times bigger than the second biggest country file!), the procedure takes quite long.

Upgrades around Oct. 13

Dear all,

During these days, I received dozen of emails with praises and encourages. Thank you for your all! As programing is a tire work and sometimes boring, your support is one of the *most* important things!

Recently I have made (or will be made very soon) some upgrades of the system which you may have noted. They are

1) enhancement of APanel lon/lat function. I have received some complaints, include several old users, about the error of APanel. That’s because the resolution of GFS is not high enough. If the surrounding on altitude of your site is “flat” enough, you may not suffer from this problem. However, if you are on a peak that is significantly higher than your surroudings, you may find that the forecast is far from satisfied, as the grid of GFS is 35×35km and the data is about an average of a 35×35km region around you. To fix this problem, a new parameter named “Altitude Correction” is introduced. This only takes effect on lon/lat query method, for those who are selecting site from database, Altitude Correction does not works.

2) Complete version of site data. In the former version, the site of Russia and U.S. was not included without a note, and I should apologize for those who came from these two countries. For site data of Russia, the raw data from NGA is far too big (~84M) and the conversion loop cannot work on it; For U.S., that’s because it uses the data from USGS, not NGA, and the format is different. Thus, I have to wrote another special conversion loop for it. The two loops are written today, and the conversion is now on process. If all goes right then the site file of the two countries will be added early tomorrow.

3) “Weachart” product (provide meteorological charts for a great variety elements) is now under partial test and is only available to Chinese users. There are a number of guys from weather bureau put some good words on it and I’m on bug fixes and model refines. However I met some obstacles with difficulties to go over it and I cannot give an exact date of when can it be okay for a public test.

Okay… so much for this. I’ve a few lines more to write but now I should go to sleep now.

Happy using!

Quanzhi

Recent development status

I back from my Northwest Expedition in late August and was busying for the opening fo new term, so development and bug-fix works are stopped. Another main reason is due to the lack of interest in using the 7Timer! service, I do not see the neccessity on throwing days and weeks for a giant.

However, recently I receive quite some mails, either domestic or oversea, express their admiration and the wishes to see more features coming out. At the same time, the hits of the website rose significantly, to about 5 times compared to last month (until now). Thus, the development is back on schedule.

These products are being considered to develop or upgrade in near future:

• Weachart (English version) — forecast chart for dozens of elements. Due to some reasons, only Chinese version is provided, but I’ll soon be working on the English one.
• A user-statistic helper to help me improve the service.
• APanel Lite — with friendly interface and 180-hour forecast period. Some complained that the current APanel is a little bit complex. So this is an “easy” version with much simplified looking (I suppose to be so).
• A cooperation project with… huh, you’ll know it soon if all go right!

These are enough to keep me working before 2009! Bugs report, comments and praises are welcome to tom6740[at]gmail.com (manually removed to [at] for @).

晴天钟再度当机

　　由于不明原因，晴天钟今晨再次当机，预计在短时间内尚无法修复，请各位原谅。

晴天钟临时抢通+[31日0时]最新天气预测

　　经过一个下午加一个晚上的奋战，晴天钟临时抢通，预计除了少量数据点无法显示（网络环境限制）以外能够正常运行。

　　抢通后的晴天钟首次运行的初始化时间为30日20时（北京时间），预测1日20时的全国云图如下：

　　预计伊吾、马鬃山、兰州以东的天气可能不佳，阿勒泰、青河、金塔、武威的天气可能适宜观测。越靠近观测时间的预测准确率会越高，请留意最新预测。

Serious problem of 7Timer!

On July 28 the server of 7Timer! broke down for unknown reason. The server resumed yesterday, but for unknown reasons there is a dead loop and the disk quote is exceed. This problem requires an server administrator to fix. I’m transfering the files to a backup server, if all things go well, 7Timer! is expected to resume later today (on the backup server).

I’m sorry for the inconvenience.

晴天钟出现严重故障

　　由于28日国家天文台服务器出现不明故障导致无法访问，导致网络上的某一文件陷入死循环，自28日00z起晴天钟一直无法正常运作。因这一文件权限较高，目前本人尚无法解决这一问题。本人正在将晴天钟迁移至备用地址，若一切顺利可在30日06z开始可以在备用空间上恢复运行。

　　对各位造成的不便，敬请谅解。

8月1日进入天气图预测180小时圈内

　　天气图运行了2天，现在看来大功能基本没有问题。鉴于有同好反映APanel不容易看懂，这个应该比较简单了吧。

　　最简单的指引：打开 http://7timer.y234.cn/V3/product.php?language=zh_cn&product_id=2 element选择“总云遮比”，将时间选到8月1日14时（由于未知原因，超过180小时的预测还不能显示，但随着日全食时间的逐渐靠近，到了晚上8点以后，就能有日全食时候的预测了），然后就对着地图看你所在区域的云量吧。

　　对于了解更多的同好也可以选择其他预报量。

　　随便写了一点Q&A：

Q: 为何我所在的区域预报偏差很大？上一次更新说是天晴，现在又变成下雨了？

A: 数值模式预测的准确率随着预测时间的增加而逐渐下降，目前认为180小时以后（7天）的预测基本近乎猜测。不过对于稳定的内陆来说，预测的准确率会高一些。所以对于这种情况，就只好等等看更新的预测会怎么样了。

Q: 局域小气候的影响…?

A: GFS的精度是35公里，对于内陆来说除非你跑到高山或者是在山脚下观测，不然的话小气候的影响应该不会很大…

Weachart于23日8时开放测试

　　发现大家都很需要能提供长期预测的资源（尤其是日全食即将到来的情况下），加上去西安的行李也准备得差不多了，孤注一掷，用最后一个晚上将Weachart调试得可以勉强使用（注意：仅仅是“勉强”能用），新特性如下：

• 预测时长为384小时，即16天，每日更新两次；
• 重新编写的web接口，更美观实用（实话，的确比旧版本的天气图好用，花了不少时间移植代码）；
• 数百个气象要素的预测（部分还没加上）。

　　由于完成得比较仓促，所以问题还是不少，请大家仔细阅读以下bug：

• 选择框总是自动回弹到默认值，因此请看清楚您选的是哪个气象要素；
• 调节时间的左右箭头只能用一次；
• 部分图像会出现entire grid unindentified的情况；
• 说明手册基本没写，但颜色设定和APanel是一样的，可以参考APanel说明。

　　由于这个是紧急做出来（本人明天一早就要出发去西安了），来给大家准备日全食用的，因此以上bug还要请大家多多谅解。感谢辽珊师妹协助测试。预计第一波更新将在23日8时前后完成。注意：Weachart的英文版尚未开放。