NCAR-GWF `WRF-CONUSII`

In this file, the details of the dataset is explained.

[!WARNING] It must be noted that the WRF-CONUSII dataset are in .tar format and the script untars the files automatically.

[!CAUTION] WRF-CONUSII dataset needs extensive I/O operations in the cache directory. So, in case of submitting SLURM jobs, it is recommended to use the $SLURM_TMPDIR directory as cache. This can be provided to the main extract-dataset.sh script using the --cache='$SLURM_TMPDIR' option. Please be mindful of single quotation marks for the argument.

Location of Dataset Files

The WRF-CONUSII simulation outputs are located under the following directories accessible from Compute Canada (CC) Graham Cluster:

/project/rpp-kshook/Model_Output/wrf-conus/CONUSII/hist # years 1995-2015
/project/rpp-kshook/Model_Output/wrf-conus/CONUSII/fut  # years 2080-2100

and the structure of the dataset hourly files is as following:

/project/rpp-kshook/Model_Output/wrf-conus/CONUSII/hist
├── 1995
│   ├── wrf2d_conusii_19950101.tar
│   ├── wrf2d_conusii_19950102.tar
│   ├── .
│   ├── .
│   ├── .
│   └── wrf2d_conusii_19951231.tar
.
.
.
├── %Y
│   ├── wrf2d_conusii_%Y%m%d.tar
│   ├── .
│   ├── .
│   ├── .
│   .
│   .
│   .
.
.
.
└── 2015
    ├── .
    ├── .
    ├── .
    └── wrf2d_conusii_20151231.tar

And, each .tar file has the following structure of content:

foo@bar:~$ tar --strip-components=5 -xvf wrf2d_conusii_%Y%m%d.tar > /dev/null
/path/to/tar/extracted/files
└── %Y
    ├── wrf2d_d01_%Y-%m-%d_00:00:00
    .
    .
    .
    └── wrf2d_d01_%Y-%m-%d_23:00:00

Coordinate Variables and Time-stamps

Coordinate Variables

The coordinate variables of the WRF-CONUSII simulations are located outside of the main dataset files. The NetCDF file containing the coordinate varibles could be found at the following:

/project/rpp-kshook/Model_Output/wrf-conus/CONUSII/hist/wrf04km_coord.nc

However, upon many trials by the author, the variables were not concatenated with the main NetCDF files easily. A workaround has been provided to add at least two necessary coordinate variables, i.e., XLAT and XLONG, to the WRF simulation files. These two coordinates are enough to work with almost all of the meteorological variables included in the dataset. The following scripts are used on Compute Canada (CC) Graham Cluster to produce the substitute NetCDF file containing coordinate variables:

# make a copy of coordinate variable NetCDF file first!
foo@bar:~$ module load cdo/2.0.4; module load nco/5.0.6; # load necessary modules
foo@bar:~$ coordFile="/project/rpp-kshook/Model_Output/wrf-conus/CONUSII/hist/wrf04km_coord.nc"
foo@bar:~$ ncks -v XLAT,XLONG "$coordFile" coord.nc
foo@bar:~$ nccopy -4 coord.nc coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncatted -O -a FieldType,XLAT,d,, coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncatted -O -a MemoryOrder,XLAT,d,, coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncatted -O -a stagger,XLAT,d,, coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncatted -O -a coordinates,XLAT,d,, coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncatted -O -a FieldType,XLONG,d,, coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncatted -O -a MemoryOrder,XLONG,d,, coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncatted -O -a stagger,XLONG,d,, coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncatted -O -a coordinates,XLONG,d,, coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncwa -O -a Time coord_new.nc coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncrename -a XLONG@description,long_name coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncrename -a XLAT@description,long_name coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncatted -O -a cell_methods,,d,, coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncatted -O -a cell_methods,,d,, coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncatted -O -a ,global,d,, coord_new.nc
foo@bar:~$ ncatted -O -h -a license,global,c,c,"GNU General Public License v3 (GPLv3)" coord_new.nc

Furthermore, the substitute NetCDF file containing the coordinate variables are located at /asset/coord_XLAT_XLONG_conus_i.nc within this repository. The workaround NetCDF is automatically being used by the script to add the XLAT and XLONG variables to the final, produced files.

Time-stamps

Each hourly, extracted NetCDF files from .tar files will have a single time-stamp indicating the time-step of the file.

Dataset Variables

The NetCDF files of the dataset contain 187 variables. You may see a list of variables by using the ncdump -h command on one of the files:

foo@bar:~$ module load cdo
foo@bar:~$ module load nco
foo@bar:~$ ncdump -h /path/to/extracted/conusii/netcdf/file.nc

Spatial Extent

The spatial extent of the WRF-CONUSII is on latitutes from 15.02852 to 73.27542 and longitudes from -156.8242 to -40.3046.

Temporal Extent

As is obvious from the nomenclature of the dataset files, the time-steps are hourly covering from the January 1995 to December 2015 (hist dataset directory). Also, the dataset covers data from January 2080 to December 2100 (fut dataset directory).

Short Description on `WRF-CONUSII` Variables

In most hydrological modelling applications, usually 7 variables are needed detailed as following: 1) specific humidity at 2 meters, 2) surface pressure, 3) air temperature at 2 meters, 4) wind speed at 10 meters, 5) precipitation, 6) downward short wave radiation, and 7) downward long wave radiation. These variables are available through WRF-CONUSII dataset and their details are described in the table below:

Variable Information
Variable Name	WRF-CONUSII Variable	Unit	IPCC Abbreviation	Comments
surface pressure	`PSFC`	Pa	ps
specific humidity @2m	`Q2`	1	huss
air temperature @2m	`T2`	k	tas
wind speed @10m	`U10,V10`	m/s	wspd	WIND=SQRT(U10² + V10²)
precipitation	`PREC_ACC_NC`	mm/hr		accumulated precipitation over one hour
short wave radiation	`SWDOWN`	W m^-2	rsds
long wave radiation	`GLW`	W m^-2	rlds

NCAR-GWF WRF-CONUSII