Add support for ECMWF forcing data to simulate shipboard meteorological conditions #167
Description
Description:
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently, virtualship simulations do not incorporate meteorological forcing data to emulate onboard ship observations. Including atmospheric conditions would significantly enhance realism and broaden the scope of simulations.
Describe the solution you'd like
We propose integrating ECMWF IFS forcing (e.g., ERA5 single levels) into the fetch command. The process should:
Allow users to opt-in for forcing data with a flag (e.g., --include-forcing)
Download data in NetCDF format, filtered to the region of interest
(Later) Interpolate this data to the ship's position and time using xarray, I don't think we need to rely on Parcelsfor this interpolation, but happy to discuss about this.
Data source:
https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-single-levels?tab=overview
Describe alternatives you've considered
No existing issue was found for this topic, which is why we are opening a new one. Future extensions could include support for radiosondes and other onboard sensors.
Additional context
We discussed this during #79 . @ammedd , I created a new issue because I did not find the one you mentioned.
Happy to work on this implementation and contribute to the repository.