[Wrf-users] question about "OUT OF BOUNDS" messages in fort.98

[Eric Altshuler]

Hello,

I am running WRF-ARW 3.0.1.1 over South Asia using a triply-nested domain (45km, 15km, 5km). In some runs, a file named fort.98 is written in the WRF run directory. It contains a number of messages, all of which are the following:

**** OUT OF BOUNDS *********

I traced this message to a subroutine called TPMIX2 in the source code file module_cu_kfeta.F in the 'phys' directory. The block of code that produces the message is:

       IF(IPTB.GE.220 .OR. IPTB.LE.1 .OR. ITHTB.GE.250 .OR. ITHTB.LE.1)THEN
         write(98,*)'**** OUT OF BOUNDS *********'
!        call flush(98)
       ENDIF

The model does not crash (go unstable) when these messages are produced, but I am concerned that these messages are occurring. Do they indicate that something is going wrong in the Kain-Fritsch convection scheme, or are they just diagnostic messages that shouldn't be cause for concern?

Thanks for any feedback on this.

Best regards,

Eric L. Altshuler
Assistant Research Scientist
Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies
4041 Powder Mill Road, Suite 302
Calverton, MD 20705-3106
USA

E-mail: ela at cola.iges.org
Phone: (301) 902-1257
Fax: (301) 595-9793