[Met_help] WRF_MET help

[John Halley Gotway]

Forbes,

The answer to your first question is YES, you can just use the "FULL" grid mask to verify over the whole domain.  When running Grid-Stat, you must specify at least one masking region, and masking
regions can be defined using the "mask_grid" and/or the "mask_poly" parameter in the config file.

However, let me caution you that I just found a small bug related to the "FULL" grid mask for Lambert Conformal grids.  It has the effect of masking out a handful of points along the boundary of the
domain.  We'll be posting a bug fix for this issue to the MET website within the next few days.  Check here for updates later this week:
http://www.dtcenter.org/met/users/support/known_issues/METv2.0/index.php

Regarding your second question, MET is not really a plotting package.  If you'd like to create plots of your forecast and observation data, I'd suggest using other plotting packages like NCL, IDV, or
whatever plotting tool you prefer.  But more to the point, I think you'll have trouble using that 72 hour file in Grid-Stat.  I assume you mean that you have a single NetCDF file that contains data
for 12 different 6-hourly accumulations.  Grid-Stat really expects that each file will contain data for a single point in time.  You won't be able to tell Grid-Stat which time period of data to use
from that file.  To run it through Grid-Stat, you'd need to break that 72-hour file out into 12 6-hourly files.  Hopefully I understood your question!

Also, let me point out that Grid-Stat doesn't read all formats of NetCDF.  In METv2.0, it expects that NetCDF files will look like the output of the PCP-Combine tool.  We're working to generalize our
support for NetCDF in future versions of MET.

Thanks,
John Halley Gotway
johnhg at ucar.edu



Claiborne Forbes Tompkins wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> My name is Forbes Tompkins and I'm a graduate meteorology student at the
> Florida Institute of Technology. I have gone through the WRF_MET tutorial
> and studied the User Guide relating to the Grid-Stat tool.
> 
> I am using the WRF version 3.0.1. to model a domain along the West African
> Coast (lat=2N/20N, long=10E/25W) for 72 hours and using FNL data as
> forcing data every 6 hours. The questions I have pertain to creating a
> "mask poly" for the domain we are using and also how to go about
> generating a NetCDF file that will use all 72 hours of data at 6 hour
> intervals?
> 
> 1- Can I just set "mask_grid[]=[FULL]" if I desire the verification of our
> entire grid? By doing this, would I still need to set "mask_poly", or is
> it only necessary to use the "mask_poly" variable if I don't use
> "mask_grid"?
> 
> 2- We have FNL forcing data at every 6 hour interval for a 72 hour period.
> We have a single WRF output file that contains all 72 hours worth of
> output. When using grid-stat, you need to give either NetCDF or GRIB files
> of the observed and forecast file at the command line. I want to create a
> plot of the obs. vs. fcst for all 72 hours for single variables such as
> acc. precipitation, temperature and the wind field. Is this possible
> considering I only have a NetCDF forecast file for the entire 72 hours and
> NetCDF observed FNL files at 6 hour intervals for the 72 hour time period?
> 
> I hope you these questions aren't too confusing as I tried to phrase what
> I'm attempting to do as best as possible.
> 
> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated,
> 
> Forbes Tompkins
> 
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