1.    System Requirement

a)    Software

i.    Operation System: Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT, XP, Linux, Unix, and Mac…

b)    Hardware

i.    No specific requirement. Suggest 64MB memory or higher, 30MB free disk space if you have not installed the JRE and 2MB if you already installed the JRE.

2.    Installation Guide

a)    Install the rainfall analysis to a web server

You can install the rainfall analysis software to a web server so that everyone having Internet accessing can use it. To do so: Copy the folder Rainfall_Web_Installers to a directory on the web server. (Or you may want to a link to the file “install.htm” in your index page). Then send the URL to the install.htm to whoever wants to install it. Also, you can add another link to the file rainfall.htm to your index page. Any client can launch the rainfall analysis software directly from a webbrowser without installing it to local computer (However, the client still need install the Java Run Time Environment (JRE) 1.4.0 and browser plug-in. Instruction on how to install the JRE and the plug-in can be found on http://java.sun.com).

b).    Install to a local computer

 Browse to the folder Rainfall_Web_Installers and launch the file Install.htm (on windows, by double clicking).

3.    Using the Rainfall Analysis Software

a)    Open a data file

Click menu->open, or click the first icon on the toolbar.

The file should be tab delimited: 13 (or 14 with annual rainfall) columns. The first column should be the year, followed by 12 months (if 14 columns, with another annual rainfall column). The program can also deal with comma delimited or space delimited text files. For other format, it will not work!

4.    Editing data

a)    You can change the data if you want. You can right click your mouse and use the popup menu to insert, delete, copy, paste or clear cells or rows.

You can use short cut keys:

(1)    Ctrl + C:     for copy
(2)    Ctrl + V:     for paste
(3)    Ctrl + I:     for insert
(4)    Ctrl + D:     for delete

b)    You can right click on the column heading of rainfall data table and use the popup menu for:

(1)    Sorting the column
(2)    Inserts serial numbers automatically

c)    For the months the rainfall data are not available, you can leave it blank, and the software will not count these months in analysis. Please notice, any blank or invalid month rainfall will lead to the annual rainfall of this year be blank. And this year will not be counted during analysis (for example, the average annual rainfall, the median of annual rainfall).

5.    Perform an analysis

• You can do one of the following analysis:

a).    Comparison of current and long-term rainfall
b).    Percentage comparison of current and long-term rainfall
c).    Frequency of higher annual rainfall
d).    Frequency of higher monthly rainfall
e).    Annual rainfall trend analysis
f).    Periods comparison
g).    Sliding window comparison

• For each analysis, the software will add a tab to the window and append the analysis result to the Analysis Result Tab.

• You can do the 1-5 all together by clicking the menu ->draw->All above

• You can do the 1-5 all together by clicking the go button on the toolbar.

•  For Sliding window analysis, you will be prompted for the sliding window length. Then the result will be showed in a new window. .

6.    Print the results

• You can use the menu->file->print->current tab to print the content of current tab.
• You can use the menu->file->print->All tabs to print the content of all the tabs.
• You can click the print current tab by click the print button on the toolbar.
• Copy and Paste Analysis Result Data or Chart
• To copy the chart to clipboard, use the Copy Button on the toolbar.
• To copy the analysis result to clipboard, you can either user the Copy Button or right click your mouse and click copy.

8.    Save the analysis result to disk

• You can save the rainfall data to a text (tab delimited file, 14 column with annual rainfall). To do so, select the rainfall data tab, and click menu->File->Save->current Tab. Or you can click the save button on the toolbar.
• You can save the analysis result chart as jpeg files. To do so, select the chart tab you want save and menu->File->Save->current Tab to save. Or you can click the save button on the toolbar.
• You can save all of them all together by click menu->File->Save->all tabs.

9.    Change the default settings

• You can change the settings by click the menu->Options->Settings
• You can change the location, which will be shown on the chart.
• You can change the default Higher Than Monthly Frequency Categories
• You can change the default Higher Than Annual Frequency Categories
• You can change the default Precision
• You can change the Measurement Unit.
• You can change the Percentage of the average and median of annual rainfall, which will be drawn on the annual rainfall trend chart.
•  After you changed the settings, the program will automatically redraw the charts

10.  Understanding the different analysis method

• Comparison of current and long-term rainfall

This one is used to compare current rainfall with the averages, maximums, minimal, and medians of the long-term rainfall. The analysis result is as following table:
Comparison Of Current And Long-term Rainfall

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Max	5.82	4.85	4.27	9.83	17.67	12.78	21.01	15.82	8.62	13.38	17.56	7.08
Min	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.06	0.12	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Average	1.14	1.24	1.22	2.39	3.27	2.79	1.95	2.21	2.6	2.66	1.38	1.35
Median	0.7	0.86	1.04	1.81	2.68	2.09	0.98	1.65	1.88	1.92	0.97	0.99
1990	0.74	3.54	2.44	3.18	2.66	0.10

• Percentage comparison of current and long-term rainfall

This one is used to compare current rainfall with long-term averages and medians. What makes this one different from the above one is that the result is expressed in term of percentage as following?

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Current/Averag*100

12.71

72.99

57.14

32.35

15.05

0.78

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

Current/Median*100

105.71

411.63

234.62

175.69

99.25

4.78

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

• Frequency of higher annual rainfall

This one is used to evaluate the possibility of annual rainfall that is higher that some values. The result is as following table:

	Annual	Rainfall
>5.0	100.0
>10.0	98.0
>15.0	90.0
>20.0	61.0
>25.0	43.0

• Frequency of higher monthly rainfall

This one is used to evaluate the possibility of monthly rainfall that is higher that some values. The result is as following table:

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
>0.5	58.0	70.0	68.0	81.0	96.0	82.0	68.0	74.0	81.0	81.0	63.0	69.0
>1.0	36.0	48.0	51.0	73.0	86.0	70.0	47.0	62.0	73.0	70.0	48.0	50.0
>2.0	19.0	21.0	17.0	48.0	65.0	51.0	32.0	41.0	47.0	47.0	19.0	22.0
>3.0	5.0	9.0	6.0	28.0	45.0	34.0	23.0	23.0	32.0	34.0	4.0	9.0
>4.0	2.0	2.0	3.0	16.0	27.0	25.0	13.0	13.0	24.0	23.0	3.0	4.0
>5.0	2.0	0.0	0.0	10.0	18.0	12.0	8.0	10.0	17.0	16.0	3.0	3.0

• Annual rainfall trend analysis

This one is used to draw the annual rainfall and evaluate the trend. Together with the annual rainfall are the average, median, 70% average and 70% median. (The percentage can be set by user).

	Annual	Rainfall
Average	24.2
Median	22.22
70.0%	Avg.	16.94
70.0%	Median	15.55

 

• Periods comparison

This one is used to compare the averages and medians of different periods. Analysis result is as follows:

Average Comparison of Different Periods

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Annual
1904-1914	0.42	1.06	1.49	3.06	3.53	2.98	2.07	1.79	2.01	2.85	2.12	1.3	24.68
1914-1924	1.01	1.05	1.55	2.39	2.66	2.76	1.67	1.98	2.56	2.1	1.02	0.99	21.75
1924-1934	1.58	1.15	1.1	3.08	2.93	2.3	3.73	1.6	2.6	1.58	0.76	1.62	24.02
1934-1944	1.24	1.13	1.27	1.71	4.18	2.36	2.38	2.38	3.15	1.77	0.88	2.04	24.49

Median Comparison of Different Periods

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Annual
1904-1914	0.35	0.78	1.43	3.25	3.4	1.73	2.68	1.97	1.3	2.86	1.33	1.25	20.46
1914-1924	0.6	0.85	1.35	2.3	2.45	2.92	0.8	1.48	1.8	1.47	1.2	0.2	19.92
1924-1934	0.67	1.4	0.85	1.7	2.19	1.18	1.9	1.73	1.95	0.95	0.58	1.6	21.21
1934-1944	0.73	0.62	1.29	1.43	2.44	2.58	2.91	0.42	2.52	1.95	0.44	1.78	24.18

• Sliding window comparison

This one is used to do sliding window comparison. Sliding window comparison means cumulate the rainfall of current month with previous n months (n is the sliding window length). By doing so one can generate another set of rainfall data, which can be analyized with the methods talked above.