Re: Reading calmet.dat file

The answers are:

[1]
To my knowledge, nobody has set up an NCL script to read a 'calmet.dat'
file.

[2]
I did look at the file. It has text and binary. To me, it looks like
a file written by fortran sequential writes. It contains a mixture
of text [characters] and binary data. Fortran's sequential writes
allow different record lengths and type to be intertwined. The files
contain hidden record separators [usually, 4-bytes in length].

Could NCL be used to read/process the file? Yes.
However, it would take a motivated person to read the file
documentation and, then, write/debug the code.

It is a shame the creators of the model did not use something like netCDF.
All the character/string stuff could have been placed as netCDF file
attributes
or character variables. The binary arrays could easily have been included.

Good Luck
D

Ray Peterson wrote:
> It is a standard Calmet .dat output file which is then submitted to
> Calpuff to model smoke dispersions (pm2.5)...
> It is a compilation of 4km grid domain for the Pacific Northwest....
> I believe the grid is 264 row, 365 col (4km cells) and has a 72 hr
> time dimension
>
> I am not the modeler, but am helping them to display their results. I
> can find out other particulars if needed.
>
> It is a 1.44gb file and I uploaded it to
> http://www.smokeforecast.org/calmet.dat if you would like to
> look/download it...
> Thanks!
>
> Ray
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Dennis Shea <shea_at_ucar.edu>
> *To:* Ray Peterson <pasayten_at_yahoo.com>
> *Cc:* ncl-talk_at_ucar.edu
> *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2009 6:22:54 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [ncl-talk] Reading calmet.dat file
>
> Well, what is the structure of the file?
>
> Where is a sample?
>
> Ray Peterson wrote:
> > Has anybody set up ncl file info to read a calmet.dat data file? I
> would like to read this file and display some of the met info as
> supporting information to some of our other calpuff output results.
> > Thank you in advance!
> > Ray Peterson
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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-- 
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Dennis J. Shea                  tel: 303-497-1361    |
P.O. Box 3000                   fax: 303-497-1333    |
Climate Analysis Section                             |
Climate & Global Dynamics Div.                       |
National Center for Atmospheric Research             |
Boulder, CO  80307                                   |
USA                        email: shea 'at' ucar.edu |
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