PP-format

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The PP-format (Post Processing Format) is a Met Office proprietary file format for meterological data.

Simualtions of the weather are performed by the Met Office's Unified Model, which can be used for Numerical Weather Predicition or Climatology, and data is collected. The nature of this data is usually meterological in nature and may include averaged data for things like global surface temperatures or accumulations of rainfall for locations inside the model, though the Unified Model is capable of outputing many sophisticated diagnostics to PP-format. This files are binary streams, structured in a proprietray file format which can then be processed and transformed into other, more portable, formats. The main reason for using such a format is to increase the rate at which data can be written from the model to disk which is a major consideration when running a simulation that must be timely and efficient.