RTTOV v13

RTTOV v13

RTTOV v13.2 was released in December 2022. The package 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.

NEW: a Docker container is available which may help when installing/running the RTTOV-GUI. Full instructions included in the README.md file.

Requirements for RTTOV v13

  • Computer running Linux/Unix or Apple Mac OS X
  • Fortran2008 compiler (e.g. gfortran)
  • gzip, bzip2 and xz compression utilities
  • GNU make utility
  • About 1GB of 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, including v1.10.x and v1.12.x) 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 and GUI are compatible with Python3. Python2 is not supported.
  • To run the HTFRTC fast model in RTTOV optionally requires the NetCDF v4 library, otherwise ASCII coefficient files can be used.

Installing RTTOV v13.2

To compile RTTOV v13.2, create a new directory for the package. For example:

$ mkdir ~user/rttov13
$ cd ~user/rttov13

Copy the compressed RTTOV package file (rttov132.tar.xz) into this new top-level directory and extract the contents, for example:

$ tar xf rttov132.tar.xz

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 v13.2 can be compiled using an interactive script (this is recommended):

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

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

RTTOV v13 code updates and known issues can be found here.