[Met_help] strange black background for MODE .ps files

[John Halley Gotway]

Shelley,

Thanks for sending the postscript files.  I took a look at them, and I
don't see a problem there.  I believe you just have a lot of data in there
that's around 0 - which is a very dark green in the default color table.

I'd suggest changing the color table used to generate the plots to be one
that you like better.  Try editing your MODE config files as follows:
- In the settings for "fcst_raw_color_table" and "obs_raw_color_table",
change "mode_raw.ctable" to "wrf_precip2.ctable".
- Set "fcst_raw_plot_min" and "obs_raw_plot_min" to 0.0.
- Set "fcst_raw_plot_max" and "obs_raw_plot_max" to a reasonably large
value.  Any values greater than this max will be plotted using the color
for the maximum value.

You're welcome to try some of the other colortables or create your own if
you like.  I'm suggesting that you set the plot min and max values so that
the colorscale is always fixed.  That way when you compare plots from
different models or times the colors in the plots will correspond to the
same values.  Otherwise, the raw colortable is scaled to the actual
min/max values in the field.

In the upcoming release of MET (in early April), I'll change the default
MODE config files to use the "wrf_precip2.ctable" colortable for
precipitation.

As for the output file names from MODE, it sounds like you'd like to
include the "MODEL" name in the output file names.  Would that solve your
issues?  That change would require changing the source code and
recompiling, but I think it's a good idea.  I'll talk to the others in our
development team and see if they'd like to make that change.

Perhaps it'd be even better to allow the user to specify a file prefix
name in the MODE config file.  Currently, that would just be "mode_", but
then the user could change it to "mode_${MODEL}".  How does that sound to
you?

Thanks,
John

>
> Hi!
>
> Most of my MODE .ps files have this strange blacked out background while
> some have the normal white background with the states.  I am using the
> exact same configuration file for all and I have scripted the WRF
> postprocessing and pcp_combine steps to be the exact same for all of my
> model runs.  Attached are two .ps files from MODE, they are of two
> different model runs (enkf0 and enkf1) valid at the same date and time
> with the exact same observations.  Have you seen this before?  Could it be
> a thresholding issue?
>
> Also, is there a way to rename the output files in the ./mode step?  I
> have been using -outdir and then changing the name manually but it is
> tedious and fraught with peril as I am analyzing six model versions and
> they are all named the same thing just in different directories.
>
> Thank you so much!
> Shelley Holmberg
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