NOAA / NWS's Meteorological Development Laboratory
Degrib (NDFD GRIB2 Decoder) 
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NOAA / NWS's Meteorological Development Laboratory
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Degrib (NDFD GRIB2 Decoder) |
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Subject: Degrib 1.60
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 14:38:22 -0400 From: Arthur Taylor To: arthur.taylor@noaa.gov Hi everyone, You all have the unique distinction of being registered on my degrib (aka NDFD_GRIB2Decoder) mailing list (all 488 of us) (I'd like to welcome: all_full_of_feathers, r.love, peter, don, ewelsh, sean, BReed, stephen.richart, ed, ptzscheu, moore, jmcamarillo, keren.smith, mrappleb, giuliani, farr, ghough, bob.stadum, g960102, rcarpenter, mark.mitchell, orson, rdunsky, jglaves, mmaciver, s.boettjer, amirnourian, mikebobbitt, seth, dcoaster, jay_ganz, graham.sinden, popeza2000, jacob_klee, dennis.hull, cowie, markt, dcoon, marty.middleton, deetotten, angel, jbrame5, fasfadfsfa, ramon.williams, wetter3, Lee-White, STILL46203, riachard_woolley, damian, donm, syoung30, pangae1, robertmoore, johnson_abb, cloayza) Please let me know (email me) if you want to unregister. The latest version of the program is on: www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/NDFD_GRIB2Decoder/ ----------- General News. 1) The first part of the NDGD (National Digital Guidance Database) is now available for download. It currently consists of ozone model forecasts for the eastern part of the CONUS (continental United States). 2) The Pacific Region is now (as of 8/23/2004) available in GRIB2 form from the public ftp and http sites. It currently consists of a Guam sector and a Hawaii sector. Note: the Guam sector currently does not have QPF forecasts or Snow forecasts, but does have the rest of the NDFD variables. The Hawaii sector does not have QPF forecasts, but does have Snow and the rest of the NDFD variables. ----------- News about this release: I have just finished putting together version "1.60" (last one that I announced was "1.53" on 6/18/2004). This release is mainly focused on being able to support: A) the NDGD, B) the Pacific Region Sectors (Hawaii, Guam), and C) to handle some changes to the weather keys. 1) The NWS has started providing NDGD which consists of model guidance, as opposed to the NDFD which consists of the forecasts generated by NWS forecasters. To support this, degrib has changed some of its directory structure. Previously it downloaded all data to "degrib/data/grib2/<sector>". Now since we have two different data sets, it uses "degrib/data/ndfd" and "degrib/data/ndgd". In addition the download parts of "tkdegrib" and "tcldegrib web.tcl" needed to be updated to go to the correct urls: http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/SL.us008001/ST.expr/DF.gr2/DC.ndfd/ for NDFD and http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/SL.us008001/ST.expr/DF.gr2/DC.ndgd/ for NDGD. 2) The NWS has started providing Hawaii and Guam. To support this, degrib had a configuration option which could be "enabled". Unfortunately, when activating the option, a bug in version 1.53 was detected. The bug was that it would occasionally use a piece of code that didn't handle the mercator projection correctly. I have now fixed that piece of code, but will be investigating it further. Please note that the "Generate Images" button does not currently work with either the NDGD, or the Pacific Regions of the NDFD. 3) The NWS has increased the possibilities for weather. In particular they introduced in "IFPS-16", the following: New Coverages: "Pds" == "Periods of", "Frq" == "Frequent", "Inter" == "Intermittent", "Brf" == "Brief". New Hazards: "OGA" == "On Grassy Areas", "Dry" == "dry", "TOR" == "Tornado", "Primary" == "Highest Ranking", "Mention" == "Include Unconditionally". weather.c has now been updated to handle these. In addition some code was added to hopefully enable degrib to gracefully handle new weather codes, coverages, intensities and hazards, that may be introduced in the future. 4) The WMO (World Meteorological Organization) has now made JPEG2000 and ZLIB compression schemes official. When they did that, they stated that the template numbers should be 40, 41 instead of the experimental numbers of 40000, and 40010. "degrib" should now be able to handle both the new and the old template numbers. 5) The WMO (World Meteorological Organization) clarified the units of the values in code table 3.2. I have made the required adjustments. Note: this doesn't affect the NDFD, or NDGD. 6) Added a -refTime option. This allows one to find the earliest reference time in a file of GRIB messages. This is useful, if you want to know how old the data is, and the file time stamp is not updating. Previously, one could parse the -I (inventory) output, but the -refTime option may make it easier. 7) Added a -stdout option. In the past when one wanted detailed meta data information about a GRIB message, one could use "degrib <file> -C -msg 1" which would create a meta (.txt) file. The problem with creating the meta (.txt) file is that one may not have permission to create files in that particular directory. With the "-stdout" (or "-out stdout") option, the meta data goes to the screen instead of to file. 8) Added the ability to work with a "tar" file containing several GRIB files. Degrib can now inventory and extract GRIB messages directly from the "tar" file, as long as the file is not compressed, and none of the GRIB files in the "tar file" have been compressed. This can be useful when dealing with archives of GRIB messages. 9) For Template 4.9, which is the "Probability forecasts" template, it now defaults to units of % instead of the units based on the particular variable. This is so that a probability forecast of "rain greater than 1 inch" has units of % rather than inches. 10) Added some GRIB1 support for the AirForce. Specifically, in GRIB1, one needs to look up the type of variable in a parameter table. I taught degrib about the NWS parameter tables, but didn't have access to the AirForce parameter tables until recently. I've also made degrib complain a little more if it can't find the parameter table. If it does, please pass me the parameter table that I should use. 11) Adjusted the GRIB1 radEarth code to default to 6371.2 km if the data originated at NCEP. This is because NCEP used 6371.2, but was forced by the GRIB1 format to encode 6367.47. Previously I had required people to remember that, and use the -radEarth option to over ride it. I have now changed it so that if it is given a GRIB1 NCEP message, it should default to 6371.2 (unless someone over rides it with the -radEarth option). 12) Several cosmetic adjustments to "tkdegrib" ----------- Personal News: I got engaged, on Aug. 12, on the floor of the old U.S. Senate chamber! :-) ----------- Please let me know if you have problems. Regards, Arthur
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