[Met_help] Problem with PrepBufr files

[John Halley Gotway]

Kayee,

I ran the pb2nc tool on your file through a debugger.  And there's more going on here than just the observation times being different.

I believe that you're trying to use a BUFR file rather than a "PREPBUFR" file.  MET is only set up to read PREPBUFR files.  For example, take a look on the following site:
http://nomads.ncdc.noaa.gov/data/gdas/200711/20071116

Only the files with "prepbufr" in the name are the PREPBUFR files that MET can read:
gdas1.tNNz.prepbufr.nr and gdas1.tNNz.prepbufr.unblok.nr where NN = 00, 06, 12, or 18

Sorry for the inconvenience.  Hopefully, you're able to locate some PREPBUFR files for your time period of interest.

John

kayee at atmos.ucla.edu wrote:
> Hi John,
> 
> This is the copy of my PrepBufr file.
> 
> Thanks for your help and quick response!
> 
> Best wishes,
> Ka Yee
> 
>> Ka Yee,
>>
>> The error message you're seeing is interesting.  This is the first time
>> we've received a question about it.  Typically all of the messages in a
>> PrepBufr file contain the same reference observation
>> time.  Each PrepBufr message contains individual observations for which an
>> "offset" time is defined.  So the valid time for an individual observation
>> is defined as the message time + the observation
>> offset time.  Typically, the reference time stays the same for all
>> PrepBufr messages in a file.
>>
>> However, in the PrepBufr file you're using, it appears that the time is
>> changing from message to message.  Would you be able to send me a copy of
>> this PrepBufr file?  It should be pretty
>> straightforward to modify the pb2nc code to account for this timing
>> difference.
>>
>> You could just email it to me.  Or if it's too big for email, feel free to
>> copy it to NCAR's anonymous ftp site using the following commands:
>>
>> cd data/2000_obs/prepbufr/obs.20000726
>> ftp ftp.rap.ucar.edu
>> username = anonymous
>> password = your email address
>> cd incoming/irap/johnhg
>> put gdas1.t00z.adpsfc.tm00.bufr_d
>> bye
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>> John Halley-Gotway
>> johnhg at ucar.edu
>>
>> kayee at atmos.ucla.edu wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I am a beginner of MET, and I encountered the following problem while
>>> running pb2nc.
>>>
>>> Here is the error message I got:
>>>
>>> /home/kayee/METv1.1 126> bin/pb2nc \
>>> data/2000_obs/prepbufr/obs.20000726/gdas1.t00z.adpsfc.tm00.bufr_d \
>>> out/pb2nc/obs.20000726_t00z.nc \
>>> data/config/PB2NCConfig \
>>> -v 2 \
>>> Reading Config File:    data/config/PB2NCConfig
>>> Creating NetCDF File:   out/pb2nc/obs.20000726_t00z.nc
>>> Reading PrepBufr File:
>>> data/2000_obs/prepbufr/obs.20000726/gdas1.t00z.adpsfc.tm00.bufr_d
>>> PrepBufr Time Center:   20000725_210000
>>> Searching Time Window:  20000725_210000 to 20000725_220000
>>> Processing 40869 PrepBufr messages...
>>> 5%
>>>
>>> ERROR: process_pbfile() -> the observation time should remain the same
>>> for
>>> all PrepBufr messages: 964562400 != 964558800
>>>
>>>
>>> Do you know why I get this error? I don't know how prepbufr time center
>>> is
>>> set?
>>>
>>> I hope someone can help, thanks a lot!
>>>
>>> Sincerely,
>>>
>>> Ka Yee Wong
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Met_help mailing list
>>> Met_help at mailman.ucar.edu
>>> http://mailman.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/met_help
>>