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:

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