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20040319: sfedit parm error

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  • Subject: 20040319: sfedit parm error
  • Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 23:27:27 -0700 (MST)
David,

Your PARM line in the ascii input file must match the
parameters you are specifying in the SFCFIL program (either
through the SFPRMF list of parameters or packing file),
and the number of parms should agree with the number
of parameters in each line.

SPED is a valid surface parameter, as is PRES. What is your
SFPRMF input?  If you are using a packing file without those
specific parameters, then that is your problem.

If you are still confused, please show a sample
(top 10 lines or so) of your ascii input file and your
parameter settings in sfcfil / sfedit.

Steve Chiswell
Unidata User Support



On Thu, 18 Mar 2004, David O. Blanchard wrote:

> Okay...I'm a little confused here.
>
> I have a text file containing surface observations. These are not SAO or
> METAR records but are observations from a mesonet.  The data file
> includes:
>
>  * station pressure
>  * sea level pressure
>  * temperature
>  * dewpoint
>  * wind direction/speed/gust
>  * latitude/longitude/elevation
>  * and a whole slew of QC flags to go with these.
>
> I'm using sfcfil to create the file, sfstns to add the lat/lon/elev data
> for the mesonet stations, and sfedit to read in the data. I have no
> problem if I set
>
>    PARM = PMSL;TMPC;DWPC;DRCT;SKNT
>
> But I also want the actual station pressure so that I can compute
> potential temps, etc., so I included that parameter
>
>    PARM = PRES;PMSL;TMPC;DWPC;DRCT;SKNT
>
> and I get following:
>
>  GEMPAK-SFEDIT>run
>  [SFEDIT -8]  Parameter PRES is not in the data set.
>  [SFEDIT -9]  SFEDIT cannot continue with invalid parameters.
>
>
> (By the way, I had to convert the winds to knots and use SKNT because
> sfedit would not accept SPED as a sfc parameter. Same problem?)
>
> So -- how do I get the actual station pressure into the data file? Or is
> there another/better way to use this information to compute the surface
> potential/virtual/equiv/etc. temps?
>
> David
>
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
> | David O. Blanchard   Flagstaff, Arizona     address@hidden  |
> +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
>