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European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts [ECMWF] - Forecast/Analysis Data for TCSP Table of Contents
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is an international organization supported by 22 European States that produces global weather analyses and forecasts for up to 10 days into the future.On a case-by-case basis, the ECMWF can also supply near real-time analysis and forecasts to specific research projects. These three hour forecast/analysis files have been supplied for the TCSP area and time period. These data are restricted to the TCSP investigators and there science teams. Additional information about ECMWF can be found here: http://www.ecmwf.int/ Campaign DescriptionThe Tropical Cloud Systems and Processes (TCSP) mission was conducted by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Costa Rica throughout the month of July, 2005. TCSP was focused on the study of the dynamics and thermodynamics of precipitating cloud systems, including tropical cyclones, using NASA-funded aircraft and surface remote sensing instrumentation.The goal of this mission was to help us better understand how hurricanes and other tropical storms are formed and intensify. Additional information about the TCSP Field Campaign can be found here: http://tcsp.nsstc.nasa.gov/ Data DescriptionThese data are three hour analysis/forecast files for the TCSP coverage area, supplied by ECMWF. There is a document called "User Guide to ECMWF forecast products" available on our server, which describes more about the ECMWF products: https://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/pub/doc/tcsp/tcspecmwf/ECMWFUserGuideofForecastProductsm32.pdf ****RESTRICTIONS NOTICE**** There are three major restrictions that are associated with these data, as per our agreement with ECMWF.
The ECMWF permission letter can be found here: https://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/pub/doc/tcsp/tcspecmwf/ECMWF_Permission_Letter_2006-04-04.pdf These data are in GRIB (GRId in Binary) format. This format is the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) standard for exchanging gridded binary data. GRIB is used by the operational meteorological centers for storage and the exchange of gridded fields, and All ECMWF model output is in GRIB format. A major advantage of GRIB is that it is self describing. Each record has information such as: resolution of the grid, time, variable, level, and who created the field. Additional information on the GRIB format can be found here: http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/docs/on388/ The ECMWF forecast/analysis data are tarred into daily files which are named:
where yyyy.ddd is the "year" and "day of year" of the data. Each daily tar file contains 8 three-hour data files which have the following naming convention:
where:
There are a number of free GRIB decoders available. One of the simplest to use is wgrib. Once you've installed wgrib, decoding grib files takes a single command line. The output from wgrib can then be read by fortran, C or even BASIC programs. The wgrib code and documentation can be downloaded here: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/wesley/wgrib.html Contact InformationTo order these data or for further information, please contact:
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