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Robb, Has there been any talk about making the netcdf output of gribtonc "AWIPS friendly"? Apparently (from what I've heard?), the netcdf files that are output from gribtonc are not able to readily be input into AWIPS? Also, has anybody got the decoders package working on the following platform (output of uname -a is below): Linux etamodel 2.4.18-14smp #1 SMP Wed Sep 4 12:34:47 EDT 2002 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux I am still having a heck of a time getting the decoders package and all the ancillary packages (udunits, netcdf, netcdf-perl) to install properly on my system? Thanks, Brian -----Original Message----- Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 12:36 PM Cc: decoders Hiya, I'm writing to inform you about some proposed changes to the output netCDF files produced by the gribtonc (GRIB-to-netCDF) decoder. There are about 35 sites that have installed the decoders package as far as I know. I'm currently in the process of updating the package, including the CDLs to make them more useful and to add attributes required by new conventions. The original CDLs followed the NUWG conventions: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/NUWG/ which haven't been modified in several years, Lately the CF conventions http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/eaton/cf-metadata/index.html are becoming established as a more complete set of conventions for model output. Also, we are considering including spatial and temporal type variables to make the NetCDF file more GIS compatible. Another idea is to enhance the metadata about the date for THREDDS servers and other NetCDF clients. The CDL variable names will continue to follow the NUWG conventions for backward capability. The long_name attribute has been standardized by concatenation of the NUWG variable name plus the NUWG level name using the word "at" as a connector. So, the T_trop long_name is "Temperature at tropopause" in all the CDLs. This supports consistency in applications such as Unidata's IDV (Integrated Data Viewer). For similar reasons, we are adding attributes required by other conventions such as CF, such as the standard_name attribute. A sample variable will look like: float T_trop(record,y,x) ; T_trop:long_name = "Temperature at tropopause" ; T_trop:standard_name = "air_temperature" ; T_trop:units = "degK" ; T_trop:GRIB_parameter_number = 11 ; T_trop:GRIB_level_flag = 7 ; T_trop:_FillValue = -9999.f ; T_trop:navigation = "nav" ; Some other additions to the variable attributes are the GRIB_parameter_number, and the GRIB_level_flag attributes. These are being included so other conventions may refer to the NCEP GRIB tables as a cross reference. This will permit more flexible usage for the NetCDF files. Another variable has been added called forecast_time, a human readable string representing the valid forecast times. To make the data monotonically increasing, the code sets records for all the valid times in the netCDF file on initialization. When netCDF GIS applications become available, the new NetCDF files will already have the needed information for correct display. We are also considering temporal variables so time bounding boxes can be created for the datasets. This is a brief summary of the kind of modifications we are making to the decoders package. If you have other ideas about what should be included or omitted, please send in your comments. Robb... =========================================================================== == Robb Kambic Unidata Program Center Software Engineer III Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research rkambic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/ =========================================================================== ==
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