Hello to the community,
My question is regarding ncl's 'hydro' function which calculates geopotential height using Pres (mb), Virtual Temperature (K) and surface GPH (gpm).
For a quick background of what I am doing, I am needing to compare the method our group is using to calculate GPH using the hydrostatic equation with ncl's hydro function to ensure that our method is working correctly.
If at all possible, I'd like some clarity on exactly what the surface GPH argument is providing the hydro function. I've never run across an actual surface GPH variable in model data, and I'm wondering if this represents something as easy as surface elevation (easy to get from NARR data), or the actual geopotential height at the surface calculated by using surface pressure and the hydrostatic equation to derive GPH at the surface?
As the units for the argument are gpm, I'm guessing the latter is the correct assumption, but didn't want to assume incorrectly.
Any thoughts are much appreciated, and as always, thanks in advance!
Jon
_______________________________________________
ncl-talk mailing list
List instructions, subscriber options, unsubscribe:
http://mailman.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/ncl-talk
Received on Mon Jan 14 15:39:22 2013
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Sat Jan 19 2013 - 10:23:16 MST