[ncl-talk] RPRAM - ALGORITHM FAILURE reemerges

[Mary Haley]

Hi Tobias,

Thanks for providing the files. I just ran your script with both NCL V6.4.0
and our 6.5.0 development version and it didn't produce any errors.

What kind of system are you running on? I ran this from a MacOS system.

This kind of error seems to happen when you have small plots that have
either lots of contours or very "twisty" contours.  As you described,
sometimes tweaking things slightly can make the problem go away.

I don't know what you've tried so far, but here are some suggestions:

1) Use raster contours instead of smooth contours, by setting:

res at cnFillMode = "RasterFill"

This can sometimes make the plotting go faster, too. However, you will need
to look to the contours to see if they are too blocky looking for your
purpose.

​2) Make
 the
​panel ​
plots slightly larger, as this gives NCL more room to draw the contours and
hence less likely to run into contour drawing problems.  The way to do this
is by setting gsnPanelXWhiteSpacePercent and gsnPanelYWhiteSpacePercent to
smaller numbers, like 1 or 2.

​If you find that the plots are getting too close in this case, then you
might consider getting rid of the gsnLeftString title, since it's the same
for every plot and you already have part of that title as the main title
for the panel main string. You can then set the "exp var = x.xx" string as
a gsnCenterString instead of a gsnRightString:

  res at gsnLeftString = ""
  do ii=10,19
;
​
res at gsnRightString = "exp var = "+sprintf("%4.2f",eof at pcvar(ii))

​  ​
res at gsnCenterString = "exp var = "+sprintf("%4.2f",eof at pcvar(ii))
​    . . .​

​  end do​

​3) If you can stand to have a non-equal number of plots per row, then draw
the plots in a 4 x 3 configuration instead of a 2 x 5 configuration, which
gives them more room.  You can force the last plot to be left-justified by
setting pres at gsnPanelCenter = False:

pres at gsnPanelCenter = False
gsn_panel(wks,plot(0:9),(/4,3/),pres)


​If none of this helps, please write back to ncl-talk and let us know.

[ I see that Rick just responded and said he could reproduce your error.
I'll check with him about why my environment is different than his. ]

--Mary



On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 5:13 AM, Tobias Kleine <tobias.kleine at gmx.net>
wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> I am currently working on EOF analysis of SSTs in the North Atlantic.
> While plotting the first 30 EOFs (polar plot) I for the first time
> encountered the apparently infamous RPRAM - ALGORITHM FAILURE error. I
> quickly found out that often enough it has something to do with the contour
> intervals or levels and thus played around with that for a while. But so
> far I've not managed to plot all my 30 EOF patterns with one setting for
> the contour levels and making all plots actually get drawn by ncl.
>
> I also found out, that the ARSCAM/ARPRAM bug has (according to
> http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/prev_releases.shtml#ARSCAMARPRAMBugFixed5.2.1)
> been fixed with NCL5.2.1 . So I wondered my problem might be or if this is
> the reemergence of it?
>
> I have uploaded my data file and the script to the incoming ftp directory
> under the following names:
> predictor01_sst_oct.nc (data, 50MB)
> SUPPORT_analyze_eof_sst.ncl (script, 4KB)
>
> -I am running ncl version 6.4.0
> -System type (don't 100% which part of this is relevant) Linux mlogin105
> 2.6.32-696.18.7.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu Dec 28 20:15:47 EST 2017 x86_64
> x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
> - error message:
> fatal:ContourPlotDraw: ARPRAM - ALGORITHM FAILURE
> fatal:ContourPlotDraw: ARPRAM - ALGORITHM FAILURE
> fatal:ContourPlotDraw: ARSCAM/ARPRAM - ALGORITHM FAILURE
> fatal:ContourPlotDraw: draw error
> fatal:ContourPlotDraw: draw error
> fatal:PlotManagerDraw: error in plot draw
> fatal:_NhlPlotManagerDraw: Draw error
>
> Thanks for considering to help me out on this issue.
> I hope I did not forget to submit relevant information.
>
> All the best
> Tobias Kleine
> Institut für Meereskunde
> Universität Hamburg, Germany
>
>
>
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