[Cosmic_announce] User question: switch impact parameter for impact height in atmPrf files?

[Doug Hunt]

Greetings CDAAC users:

We are currently revising our inversion code and are trying to do some 
small clean-up of the atmPrf data format.

atmPrf files use our high-resolution netCDF output format defined at:

http://cosmic-io.cosmic.ucar.edu/cdaac/cgi_bin/fileFormats.cgi?type=atmPrf

We are considering switching the impact parameter column in this file 
('Impact_parm' in the netCDF file) to impact height.  'Impact parameter' 
is the independent height variable for bending angle profiles stored in 
atmPrf files.  It measures the distance to the ray path from the center of 
sphericity of the earth.  It is not a very convenient height variable 
since all of it's values are in the 6000 km range.

'Impact height' is simply impact parameter with the earth's local radius 
of curvature (the 'rfict' attribute in the atmPrf file) subtracted off. 
Impact height ranges from ~2km to ~60km and as such it is more convenient 
for use in plotting and generating statistics.

If anyone would have an objection to us making this change to atmPrf files 
starting in several months, could you please email me (Doug Hunt, dhunt at ucar.edu)?

Thanks much!

--Doug Hunt

dhunt at ucar.edu
Software Engineer
UCAR - COSMIC, Tel. (303) 497-2611