Users • Using hourly GFS in HYSPLIT

We're wanting to use GFS with HYSPLIT. We can download for example https://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/n ... fs0p25f000, but we observe the met snapshots are 3 hours each, while we'd like to instead use the more granular hourly data that we see in GRIB2 format for example https://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/n ... .0p25.f000.

When we've tried using api2arl_v4, with GRIB2 files like the above, we seem to create a very-different looking ARL output, with different met model, different vertical grid size, and different data:

Using HYSPLIT's chk_file utility, here are some of the differences in boldface:

Downloaded 3-hour HYSPLIT format:
Meteo data model : GFSQ
Grid size x,y,z : 1440 721 56
Global meteorology grid
56 13.0000 6 TEMP 142 UWND 88 VWND 206 WWND 41 RELH 160 PRES 60
55 16.0000 6 TEMP 121 UWND 88 VWND 48 WWND 72 RELH 99 PRES 60
…

Using api2arl_v4 from the hourly GRIB2:
Meteo data model : kwbc
Grid size x,y,z : 1440 721 24
Global meteorology grid
24 70.0000 7 HGTS 226 TEMP 52 UWND 203 VWND 27 WWND 168 RELH 96 SPHU 95
23 50.0000 7 HGTS 252 TEMP 239 UWND 37 VWND 199 WWND 14 RELH 138 SPHU 55
…

Is there a recipe for more correctly using api2arl_v4? Or is there some reason it's inadvisable to use the hourly GFS with HYSPLIT?

Best,
Randy

Randy Sargent
Director of Visualization
Carnegie Mellon CREATE Lab

Statistics: Posted by rsargent — October 18th, 2023, 3:52 pm

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