Getting started with GeoClaw

Running a GeoClaw code

Setting up, running, and plotting a GeoClaw application follows the same pattern as other AMRClaw applications, which in turn use many of the same conventions as the classic single grid Clawpack code, in particular:

• Setting parameters is done in setrun.py, as for other versions of Clawpack, as described in Specifying classic run-time parameters in setrun.py. However, there are several new parameters that may or must be set for GeoClaw. See Specifying GeoClaw parameters in setrun.py for more details on these.
• The program can be compiled and run using make and make .output as for other versions, see Fortran version.
• Plots of results can be created either as a set of webpages via make .plots or interactively using Iplotclaw. See Plotting with Visclaw for more details. Some additional Python plotting tools that are useful for GeoClaw output (e.g. plotting land and water with different colormaps) are described in the section Plotting routines for GeoClaw.

Topography

To simulate flow over topography it is of course necessary to specify the topography. This is usually done by providing one or more files of surface elevation (relative to some reference, e.g. sea level) at a set of points on a rectangular grid (with x-y locations in Cartesian units or in latitude-longitude, depending on the application).

Several file formats are recognized by GeoClaw. See Topography data for more information on how to specify topography and some on-line resources for obtaining topography.

Plotting GeoClaw results

GeoClaw results can be plotted with the usual Python plotting tools (see Plotting with Visclaw).

Some special tools and colormaps are available, see GeoClaw plotting tools.

Setting up a new example

• Quick start guide for tsunami modeling