[Met_help] [rt.rap.ucar.edu #43603] History for Questions about the pb2nc utility

[RAL HelpDesk {for John Halley Gotway}]

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  Initial Request
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I have a couple questions about the pb2nc utility in the MET tools software:

1.  When specifying the obs_grib_code parameter in the pb2nc configuration file, will I be able to retain all possible grib codes/observations by leaving this list blank?

2.  I would like the output NetCDF file that is generated by the pb2nc utility to contain the actual quality mark associated with each observation.  Is this possible, or something that could be added in future releases of the MET software?

Thanks in advance for the help,
- Tom Cram


Thomas Cram
NCAR / CISL / DSS
303-497-1217
tcram at ucar.edu





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  Complete Ticket History
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Subject: Re: [rt.rap.ucar.edu #43603] Questions about the pb2nc utility
From: John Halley Gotway
Time: Fri Jan 21 10:00:13 2011

Thomas,

Regarding (1), it would appear that no, you must explicitly list out
the GRIB codes in which you're interested.  For most of the other
options, specifying a empty list has the effect of retaining all
possible, but when I ran with the "obs_grib_code" set as an empty
list, I got the following error:

   ERROR: process_config() -> At least grib code or grib code
abbreviation must be provided for obs_grib_code.

If you take a look at the comments of the PB2NC config file, you'll
see the list of GRIB codes that PB2NC is looking for and/or deriving.
So the following setting would include them all:

   obs_grib_code[] = [ "SPFH", "TMP",  "HGT",  "UGRD", "VGRD",
                       "DPT",  "WIND", "RH",   "MIXR", "PRMSL" ];

There may be additional observation types included in the PREPBUFR
files (precip at gauges, for example), but the PB2NC tool is not
currently set up to extract them.  One of our development tasks for
the future is enhancing the PB2NC tool to extract all available
observations in PREPBUFR files.

Regarding (2), again the answer is no.  The quality mark is not
included in the NetCDF output of PB2NC since that information is not
used by the other MET tools.  However, I can see how it would be
nice to carry forward the quality mark value and then allow it's value
to be specified when you run the Point-Stat tool.  I'll make a note of
this idea for our team to consider when enhancing the
PB2NC tool.

Thanks,

John Halley Gotway

On 01/20/2011 03:47 PM, RAL HelpDesk {for Thomas Cram} wrote:
>
> Thu Jan 20 15:47:11 2011: Request 43603 was acted upon.
> Transaction: Ticket created by tcram at ucar.edu
>        Queue: met_help
>      Subject: Questions about the pb2nc utility
>        Owner: Nobody
>   Requestors: tcram at ucar.edu
>       Status: new
>  Ticket <URL:
https://rt.rap.ucar.edu/rt/Ticket/Display.html?id=43603 >
>
>
> I have a couple questions about the pb2nc utility in the MET tools
software:
>
> 1.  When specifying the obs_grib_code parameter in the pb2nc
configuration file, will I be able to retain all possible grib
codes/observations by leaving this list blank?
>
> 2.  I would like the output NetCDF file that is generated by the
pb2nc utility to contain the actual quality mark associated with each
observation.  Is this possible, or something that could be added in
future releases of the MET software?
>
> Thanks in advance for the help,
> - Tom Cram
>
>
> Thomas Cram
> NCAR / CISL / DSS
> 303-497-1217
> tcram at ucar.edu
>
>
>

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