[Wrf-users] SST data for WRF

[Stavroula Stolaki]

Hi to everyone!

I am quite a beginner in using WRF and I would like to ask you one  
thing about SST data. I am confused about which SST type of data to use.

On the NCEP Real-Time SST archives  
(http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/oper/Welcome.html) webpage (as  
proposed in the WRF-ARW online tutorial) there are data that reside in  
the ftp://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/history/sst/ophi directory.

On the other hand there are also data in
ftp://ftp.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/gfs/prod/gfs.YYYYMMDDHH  
which are of the type:

sst2dvar_grb_0.5.grib2
sst2dvar.t12z.nam_grid
sst.t12z.nam_grid
rtgssthr_grb_0.5.grib2  and
rtgssthr_grb_0.083.grib2 (for the 1/12 degrees dataset)

I am not sure which data I should use for my WRF runs (independent of  
the resolution of them). What about the sst.t12z.nam_grid data?Are  
they for the 1200UTC time?In which format are they?

Moreover,in the case I would like to start my runs at 1200UTC of a  
day, how could I use the 0000 UTC SST data,since as far as I know,the  
SST data available concern the 0000 UTC time only.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you for your time!

Stavroula Stolaki