[Dart-users] WRF-related updates to the DART subversion repository

[Nancy Collins]

hello dart users,

this note is of interest to WRF/DART users.

i've just committed updates to the following files:

     DART/trunk/models/wrf/WRF_DART_utilities/dart_to_wrf.f90
     DART/trunk/models/wrf/WRF_DART_utilities/dart_to_wrf.html
     DART/trunk/models/wrf/WRF_DART_utilities/dart_to_wrf.nml
     DART/trunk/models/wrf/WRF_DART_utilities/wrf_to_dart.f90
     DART/trunk/models/wrf/model_mod.html
     DART/trunk/models/wrf/work/input.nml


the biggest change here is that there is now a namelist option to print out
the data min/max values for each variable (U,V,W, etc) as the converters
move the data between WRF NetCDF files and the DART state vector format 
files.

if the model gets into an unstable regime and produces very large values
for some state variables, turning on the 'print range' option may help 
pinpoint when
things start going wrong.   the 'debug' option includes all the data 
ranges plus
much more detailed information about the lat/lon extent, the grid sizes, etc
and may be useful when setting up an experiment for the first time or when
making sure the wrfinput file matches what you intend to be running.

the one functional change in the code is that the time associated with an
updated state vector file used to be copied from the file created to 
tell the
wrf model advance what time to advance to (wrf.info) and not from the
wrf output file itself.  thus there was no way for the date in the updated
state vector to indicate a failed model advance or non-updated wrf out 
files.
the model time is now copied directly from the wrf netcdf files.

a non-backwards-compatible change is that the dart_to_wrf converter
now requires a new namelist "&dart_to_wrf_nml" in the input.nml file.
the example input.nml which was committed with this update includes
this new namelist.  it will need to be copied to any other input.nml files
you are using with your experiments.

the default behavior of the converters remains the same as before to
minimize the volume of output.  you will have to enable the
'print_data_ranges' item to get the new additional output.

as always, contact me if you've got any questions.
nancy