1.2 How to use MIPAS data?

1.2.1 Software Tools

1.2.1.1 General tools

1.2.1.2 EnviView

1.2.1.3 MIPAS specific software tools

The BASIC Envisat Atmospheric Toolbox (BEAT)

Overview

The BEAT is a collection of executable tools and an application programming interface (API) which has been developed to facilitate the utilisation, viewing and processing of ESA GOMOS, MIPAS and SCIAMACHY data products. The purpose of the BEAT is not to duplicate existing commercial packages, but to complement them with new functions.

The main components of the BEAT are:

• support all Level-1b, Level-2, and auxiliary product formats for the Envisat atmospheric instruments (60 different product formats)
• fast and easy access to the data products using the EAT library from the C language, and from IDL and Matlab (e.g. from IDL and Matlab, only three calls are needed to get data out of a product file)
• selection of product files according to time and/or geolocation; finding of co-located data
• data import and export functionality to and from ASCII, binary, HDF-4, HDF-EOS, HDF5, HDF5-EOS
• data ingestion of GOME and TOMS products
• operations on spectral and spatial data: interpolation, resampling, gridding, binning, etc.
• microwindow operations (e.g. selecting a spectral range)
• integration of instrument-specific tools (e.g. GOMECAL, a new GOME calibration tool)
• visualisation and analysis tool (VISAN)

Architectural Design Goals

The primary design features of BEAT are:

• An open source design enabling the user community to improve its quality.
• Portability through platform-independent design for use on major operating systems (e.g. SunOS, Solaris, Linux, and MS Windows).
• High-performance and flexibility.

A basic version of BEAT called will be released in mid December 2002.