RTTOV v12

RTTOV v12

The latest version of RTTOV is RTTOV v13.

RTTOV v12.1 was released in February 2017 and the last update v12.3 was released in March 2019. RTTOV v12 may be obtained by adding RTTOV to your list of software preferences once you have registered and logged in.

Coefficients, emissivity and BRDF atlas data files are available separately on the RTTOV downloads page.

Frequently asked questions are asked and answered here.

Please look at the list of known bugs as the official release package does not contain any updates or fixes listed there.

RTTOV v12 documentation

User documentation:

Additional scientific, technical and design documentation:

Performance comparisons:

Requirements for RTTOV v12

  • Computer running Linux/Unix or Apple Mac OS X
  • Fortran 90 compiler (e.g. gfortran)
  • gzip compression utility
  • GNU make utility
  • 500+ MB free disk space required for full install (including bundled coefficients and test and reference data). Additional space is required for larger coefficient files that are not included with the RTTOV package.
  • RTTOV can be compiled and run without any external dependencies, but some features require external libraries or software.
  • Optionally RTTOV can be compiled against the HDF5 library (v1.8.8 or later) which enables reading of HDF5-format coefficients, emissivity/BRDF atlases and use of the RTTOV GUI.
  • To use the RTTOV GUI and/or Python wrapper you must have f2py (part of NumPy) installed. The wrapper is compatible with Python 2 and 3 (and RTTOV can be compiled with both), but Python 2 is currently recommended if running the GUI.
  • To run the HTFRTC fast model in RTTOV requires the NetCDF v4 library.

Installing RTTOV v12.3

To compile RTTOV v12.3, create a new directory for the package. For example:

$ mkdir ~user/rttov12
$ cd ~user/rttov12

Copy the compressed RTTOV package file (rttov123.tar.gz or rttov123.tar.xz) into this new top-level directory and extract the contents, for example:

$ tar xf rttov123.tar.gz

RTTOV can be compiled without any external dependencies. However to make use of all functionality you should edit the file build/Makefile.local with the location of your HDF5 installation (and optionally other external libraries) before compiling.

RTTOV v12.3 can be compiled using an interactive script (this is recommended):

$ cd src
$ ../build/rttov_compile.sh

Alternatively you can compile manually as for v11: see the user guide for details.

RTTOV v12 code updates and known issues can be found here.