General questions:

1. What is the Interwave Analyzer ?

Interwave Analyzer is an user-friendly software designed to analyze the dynamic of thermal stratified basins, such as lakes and reservoirs based on temperature and meteorological data. The software can be used to analyze data from field and numerical models.

2. What is the difference from Lake Analyzer ?

Differently from Lake Analyzer, the Interwave Analyzer provides to user a more detailed analysis related to baroclinic activity. The software is coupled with a numerical model to identify different internal seiche modes that can be excited. Combined with modelling, the software also apply spectral analysis to isotherms to identify internal waves, highlighting the occurrence of internal seiches of higher vertical modes and those influenced by wind-resonance. The software provides several output results that helps on the characterization of internal wave field. The interwave Analyzer also provides theoretical results from the literature, which can be easily compared with results from model and spectral analysis.

Besides the detailed characterization of internal waves, Interwave Analyzer also provides general parameters to describe the stratification and mixing of lakes and reservoirs.

2. Why Interwave Analyzer was developed?

Interwave Analyzer was created in order to combine all technique used to identify internal waves in thermal stratified lakes using temperature sensors. The main goal is to make the analysis of internal wave easier and accessible even for those that lack the background knowledge of internal waves.

3. What is Interwave Analyzer good ?

Interwave Analyzer is good for analyzing temperature data from lakes, providing information according to the dynamic of lake interior.

4. Which kind of data do I need to run Interwave Analyzer ?

The most important inputs are: time-series of water temperature and meteorological data (wind speed and wind direction).

5. Are there copyright restrictions on the use of Interwave Analyzer ?

Interwave Analyzer has a MIT license, so you can use and innovate without restrictions. However, we appreciate that any modification in the main code be reported back to us.

6. How to cite in a publication ?

BUENO, Rafael de Carvalho; BLENINGER, Tobias Bernward; LORKE, Andreas. Internal wave analyzer for thermally stratified basins, 2021.

Specific questions:

7. Can I have gaps in my data ?

No. Interwave analyzer does not support data gaps yet! Data treatment (for all input data) should be performed before to run Interwave Analyzer. We are currently developing a data treatment for meteorological data (wind speed and direction), this should be available just on version 2.00.0.

8. When I run the code, the GUI is not displayed on the screen. What is happening ?

You should look the command line (in the precompiled version it is displayed in a black window, which is opened with the GUI), where error message should be displayed. Often, if the GUI is not displayed, the tkinter library is not properly installed or you missed some file (often, in this stage, we would say that it is the icon file for interwave analyzer, since it is the only file required to display the GUI) that should be in the same folder where you are running the program.

For precompiled version, this may arise due to the version of the Window system, which can incompatible with the precompiled version.

9. My processing data stop when it is already running. Why ?

This issue may arise by a hundred of factor. Firstly, try to find in which part of the code the software stops to work properly. If it stops, it must display an error in command line. If any message was displayed, the software should be running (depending on the amount of data, the screen may freeze for some minutes). If the error message has been displayed on the command line (not in the white one), we recommend you to try to find the error message on the user manual. The user manual provides many common errors which is related to wrong definition of input data.

10. Does the Interwave Analyzer say clearly if internal waves had been generated in the system?

Yes and no. The interwave Analyzer provides to user a series of methods (spectral analysis, theoretical results based on well established theories, modeling results, and a series of properties of internal waves that were susceptible to be generated in the system. However, the Interwave Analyzer does not analyze the results provided by those methods, and does not display a message saying: "There is internal wave within the system interior". The results from Interwave Analyzer are displayed in the best way to facilitate the analysis by user. In addition, the user manual provides tips and steps to facilitate this analysis, that could be done even for non-specialist in fluid dynamics.

11. To run the script mode of Interwave Analyzer, should I have any knowledge of Python language.

No. You do not need any knowledge. Actually, you do not need any knowledge of programming languages. The only think you need to know is how to run a script on the chosen python interpreter.