[ncl-talk] Confusing documentation for wrf_omega and wrf_user_getvar

[James Russell]

Hi all,

Just wanted to clarify some confusion over the documentation for the
wrf_omega and wrf_user_getvar functions.

In the wrf_user_getvar documentation it says that the units of omega are in
[C]. Also the first line in
the wrf_omega documentation says:


*"Calculates approximate omega in C..."*

Also I'm confused why these functions use mixing ratio and temperature. At
first I thought I was confused about what was being output in these two
functions since the units for dp/dt should not be  celsius, and I'm not
familiar with an equation that uses these variables to calculate dp/dt.
However, further down the page in wrf_omega it says that these functions
output dp/dt and that the units are in Pa/s. That cleared up that this is
in fact dp/dt at least. But I'm still confused about the calculation being
used.

Could someone point me to the code these use? Or perhaps a paper with the
specific equation used? Also it might be helpful if the documentation could
be corrected to avoid such confusion, especially the units.

Thanks,
James

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graduate Research & Teaching Assistant
PhD Student: Atmospheric Science
Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences
North Carolina State University
https://sites.google.com/view/james-russell/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.ucar.edu/pipermail/ncl-talk/attachments/20180406/f76c7108/attachment.html>