GFM products are fully accessible via a GIS environment or web browser. The WMS layers can be accessed using any WMS client viewer, e.g. Quantum GIS (QGIS) or ESRI ArcMap. GFM offers WMS that supports temporal requests (WMS-T).
The WMS-T service for the GFM product is based on GeoServer technology. GeoServer allows users to display the needed spatial information making maps available in a variety of output formats. OpenLayers, a free mapping library, is integrated in GeoServer, making map generation quick and easy. GeoServer is built on GeoTools, an open source Java GIS toolkit. The GFM WMS-T is freely accessible at a dedicated URL.
The service is designed to display a single global layer per day.
The steps for loading the GFM WMS-Ts are summarised below:
| 1 | Launch QGIS |
| 2 | To avoid timeout errors, set the timeout for network requests to 14,400,000 ms |
| 3 | In the browser panel right-click on the WMS/WMTS icon |
| 4 | In the Create a New WMS/WMTS Connection window insert a title for your WMS connection in the Name section and paste the GFM WMS URL https://geoserver.gfm.eodc.eu/geoserver/gfm/wms then click OK. |
| 5 | At this point in the browser panel under the WMS/WMTS icon you should see the title for the WMS connection that you have entered. Click on the arrow near the WMS connection to open it. You should see the GFM WMS layers as follow: |
| 6 | To view the layers simply drag and drop the layer icon into the Layers panel underneath the Browser panel, the layer will be displayed in the Map Panel |
| 7 | In the Layer panel you can see the legend associated to each layer underneath the name of the layer |
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Some of the layers are queryable, to retrieve the info for the layer:
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Using ESRI ArcGIS / ArcMap, you can load a WMS-T directly into your map, as follows:
| 1 | Launch ArcMap |
| 2 | In the Catalog panel (on the right hand side of the screen) click on the Add WMS Server icon |
| 3 | In the Add WMS Server window insert the GFM WMS URL (https://geoserver.gfm.eodc.eu/geoserver/gfm/wms) in the URL section then click on the Get Layers button to retrieve the WMS layers. After the retrieving of the layers click on the OK button to close the window: |
| 4 | At this point in the Catalog panel you should see all the available GFM layers. To view the layers simply drag and drop the layer icon into the Table of Contents panel on the left of the screen. In the Table of Contents you can see the legend associated with each layer by right clicking the name of the layer and then select the legend from the context menu. |
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Some of the layers are queryable, in order to retrieve the info for the layer:
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It is possible to request different forecast time using the time slider button. This will open a time slider window, moving the cursor will call different forecast times for the selected layer:
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| 7 | Further documentation on how to use WMS with ESRI ArcGIS/ArcMap can be found on-line |
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