GEOCLIMA is a software that allows for a simple and direct visualization of the spatial distribution and annual cycle of climate variables (rainfall, atmospheric pressure, sea surface temperature, etc.). Variables may be expressed as monthly values at meteorological stations, or they can be specified on a regular grid. The program was designed for teaching applications of climatological concepts, both at the secondary school and university courses. GEOCLIMA v2.1 uses databases in ASCII format (text files) which can be easily edited and updated.

GEOCLIMA is distributed free of charge, but it is requested to acknowledge the original source when using it: Department of Geophysics (DGF), FCFM – Universidad de Chile (www.dgf.uchile.cl).

Main functions of the software are:

a) To display global or regional climatological fields for one specific month or for a group of months.
b) To perform some simple operations in the process of combining information for several months (adding, subtracting, averaging).
c) To search for one specific meteorological station in the corresponding database in order to display the respective annual cycle.

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Acknowledgments

GEOCLIMA was developed by students at the School of Engineering of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (FCFM) of the Universidad de Chile, under the supervision of Prof. Patricio Aceituno from the Department of Geophysics. With the sponsorship of the program Explora – Conicyt, the first version of the software was developed by Bernhard Lopez by the end of the 1990ís. He designed its general characteristics, as well as the specific attributes and capacities of the software. With the sponsorship of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), through its Education and Training Programme, a group of students composed by Rolando Martínez, Sergio Quiroga and Sergio Acevedo, under the leadership of Pablo Abalos, developed in 2002 a new version of the software using Java as the programming language. Keeping the basic ideas under which GEOCLIMA was originally designed they added more flexibility to the graphic output, and to the management of databases. They also made the software accessible to other languages beyond Spanish. During 2007 and 2008 Miguel Gutiérrez prepared version 2.1 of the software, correcting some errors and completing some missing information. Verónica Pichara was in charge of the graphic design of the title page of the program. Rodrigo Sánchez is responsible for the technical support of the Web site (www.atmosfera.cl) where GEOCLIMA is distributed.

Many people have collaborated throughout the development of this software. Observations and comments by Prof. Rene Garreaud, from the DGF, are particularly acknowledged. GEOCLIMA v2.1 was developed with partial support from project ACT-19 of Conicyt – Chile.

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