20011031: specific humidity grids from NCAR MassStore on tape at UVa

>From: Unidata User Support <address@hidden>
>Organization: Unidata Program Center/UCAR
>Keywords: 200004270006.e3R06rG00226 McIDAS-X -XCD dmgrid.k gbtbpds001.*

Tony

I hope that things are going well for you!

Down to business:

Some time ago, Owen (through Jennie) sent us notification that the
McIDAS grib decoder, gribdec, was incorrectly decoding specific humidity
grids that he had gotten from the NCAR MassStore.  I recently sent a note
to Owen asking him if he could lay his hands on one or more of these
grids so I could provide them to SSEC for testing purposes.  Here is
what Owen said:

>I just logged onto the NCAR mass-storage
>system and downloaded one of their compressed ETA files for a day in Sept.
>1997. They give instruction on how to use the msexport command to
>uncompress the files. But this comamnd is no longer supported on the NCAR
>machines and I get a mesage saying I need to use the msexp command, but of
>course they didn't give me any of the parameters that I need to unpack the
>files.  So if you know how to use msexp I can give you the packed binary.
>One small problem with me getting the files to you in a timely manner is
>that I am leaving on Tuesday to spend 5 weeks working in Germany!

So, Owen was on his way out of the door before he could get hold of
some grids for testing.  He did note, however, that the original ones
that he had problems with are on exabyte tapes back at UVa, and that
you _might_ be able to get one or more off of one of the tapes.
So, my question for you is whether or not this is feasible _without_
an extreme effort on your part.  If it is, I would greatly appreciate
getting one or more of the grib messages with the grids so SSEC
can add to them to their testing datasets.

Thanks in advance for any comments...

Tom