[Met_help] mask_id, CONUS.stations (or something like it - format)

[John Halley Gotway]

Mike,

When you run Point-Stat, I'd suggest using the "-v 2" option which should print to the screen how many matched pairs it found.  I'm guessing it found 0 matched pairs since you saw no output.

There are many reasons why you may be getting 0 matched pairs, but it'd probably be fastest and easiest if you just send me a sample forecast file, a sample observation file, and the Point-Stat config
file you're using.  I could probably figure out what's going on.

If you'd like to do that, you could post it to our anonymous ftp site:

   ftp ftp.rap.ucar.edu/incoming/irap/met_help
   username=anonymous
   password="your email address"
   mkdir shaw_data
   cd shaw_data
   put "your files"
   bye

If you do send files, just let me know when they're posted.

Thanks,
John


Shaw, Michael J CTR USAF AFWA 16 WS/WXE wrote:
> Hi John.
> 
> Finally got around to trying this.  An mpr file is generated with just a header in it (the column labels), but no data and no errors!  Granted, these grib files are also the grib files with weird gribcodes and PR and TR values.  But I would have thought giving point_Stat the grib abbreviation and the specific record number for the variable would have produced some data (correct or not) for this simple extract-and-put-in-0mpr-file operation...or at least reported an error message.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Thanks,
> Mike
> 
> ______________________________________________
> 
> Michael Shaw, Contractor
> SAIC/NASA Support Scientist
> michael.shaw.ctr at offutt.af.mil 
> 16WS Environmental Characterization
> HQ AFWA-SAIC
> 101 Nelson Drive
> Offutt AFB, NE 68113-1023
> 402-232-7690 Comm * 402-272-7690 DSN * 402-294-8230 Fax
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Halley Gotway [mailto:johnhg at ucar.edu] 
> Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 2:14 PM
> To: Shaw, Michael J CTR USAF AFWA 16 WS/WXE
> Subject: Re: mask_id, CONUS.stations (or something like it - format)
> 
> Mike,
> 
> You know, I just realized the other day that that file doesn't exist in the tar file either.  I'll ask around to see if we have a good list of the standard station names we could include in a future
> release.  It really is just a list of station names in a file separated by whitespace.  You could have them all on one line or put one on each line... however you'd like to format it.  They just need
> to be separated by whitespace.
> 
> John
> 
> Shaw, Michael J CTR USAF AFWA 16 WS/WXE wrote:
>> Hi John.
>>
>> Sorry...but what's the CONUS.stations file (or a stations file for mask_sid) format have to look like?  I'm not seeing this file (mentioned in the config file), for example, in the release/tarball, and not readily seeing much/anything about it the docs/tutorial.  Is it really just a txt file with station numbers - SCAN, e.g. - on one line with spaces between them?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mike
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>>
>> Michael Shaw, Contractor
>> SAIC/NASA Support Scientist
>> michael.shaw.ctr at offutt.af.mil 
>> 16WS Environmental Characterization
>> HQ AFWA-SAIC
>> 101 Nelson Drive
>> Offutt AFB, NE 68113-1023
>> 402-232-7690 Comm * 402-272-7690 DSN * 402-294-8230 Fax
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: John Halley Gotway [mailto:johnhg at ucar.edu] 
>> Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 11:38 AM
>> To: Shaw, Michael J CTR USAF AFWA 16 WS/WXE; met_help
>> Subject: Re: 
>>
>> Michael,
>>
>> Yes, that's basically correct.  The main difference between Point-Stat and Grid-Stat is that Point-Stat is set up to handle point observations while Grid-Stat handles gridded observations.  Beyond
>> that, they basically do the same thing: collect a bunch of fcst-obs matched pairs over a user-defined region and compute a variety of statistics from those sets of matched pairs.  Both Point-Stat and
>> Grid-Stat are designed to be run once for each forecast valid time.
>>
>> I see that you're more interested in looking at performance through time at one or more individual points.  And while MET wasn't optimized to solve that problem, there are ways to compute that.  You
>> could run Point-Stat at each forecast valid time with the sole purpose of producing matched pairs at a set of observation locations.  And then you could use the Stat-Analysis tool to read those
>> matched pairs through time for each observation location and compute any number of statistics.  In order to do this, in the Point-Stat configuration file, you'd use the "mask_sid" (for station id) to
>> provide a list of the stations in which you're interested.  And you'd set the "output_flag" parameter to only dump out the matched pair (MPR) line type.  Then you'd run Stat-Analysis to read in those
>> MPR lines for each station, and recompute stats through time.
>>
>> I do know of at least one other users who's doing exactly that.
>>
>> Hope that helps clarify.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> John
>>
>> Shaw, Michael J CTR USAF AFWA 16 WS/WXE wrote:
>>> Hi John.
>>>
>>> Just getting back to some of this...and still wondering - point_stat isn't really for a point, it's for a set of points (i.e., a single point wouldn't be able to generate any statistics...with a sample size of 1 and all), right?  So, the stat analysis part of MET is to then organize, say, rows (so a timeseries if the rows are for different times) of point_stat stats (which could only be done for a SET of points) and compute stats on those stats, right??
>>>
>>> I.e., there's no way of doing a single station/gridpoint pair timeseries statistical analysis with MET??
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Mike
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>>
>>> Michael Shaw, Contractor
>>> SAIC/NASA Support Scientist
>>> michael.shaw.ctr at offutt.af.mil
>>> 16WS Environmental Characterization
>>> HQ AFWA-SAIC
>>> 101 Nelson Drive
>>> Offutt AFB, NE 68113-1023
>>> 402-232-7690 Comm * 402-272-7690 DSN * 402-294-8230 Fax
>>>
>>>