Get a variable at specific location

[leroygr]

Hi everybody,

I'm a new user of WRF and NCL and I have a question...

I want to have the values of wind, temperature, atmospheric pressure and air density at a specific location, in form of a time serie in netcdf format. I have a WRF output but I don't know how to use NCL to get these variables at the location I want (X:574565, Y: 5585549 in UTM31 WGS84 coordinate system) and for the time series of my simulation... I saw a lot of NCL scripts (wrf_user_ll_tij for example) but I'm a little lost .
Is it also possible to interpolate these at a specific height?

Somebody can help me with this issue?

Thank you very much.

G.L

[jimmyc]

All of this is straightforward.
In order to extract data at a point use the function you referred to, to convert from lat-lon to grid indice (closest grid point). Then you can extract the time series from the model at that specific point.

To write a netcdf file:http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/Applications/o-netcdf.shtml

Yes you can interpolate. The wrf tutorial with NCL is a good place to start:
http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/OnLineTutorial/Graphics/NCL/index.html

[leroygr]

Thanks for your answer!

I succeed to get windspeed at a specific location. Now i want to write the values for each time in an ASCII file. I used the command asciiwrite and I get the values in a ASCII output file. I want to go further and put more informations in the output file (latitude, longitude and time). I tried to apply example 4 from asciiwrite ncl documentation but it doesn't work.

Somebody have an idea to help me?

Here is my NCL script:

Code: Select all

;************************************************************************************
;* NCL script to generate netCDF file containing wind speed at specific location    *
;* Example for wrfout_d01_2000-01-24_12:00:00.nc                                    *
;*                                        *
;************************************************************************************


; --------------  LOAD FUNCTIONS AND PROCEDURES ----------------

load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm/gsn_code.ncl"
load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm/gsn_csm.ncl"
load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm/contributed.ncl"
load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/wrf/WRFUserARW.ncl"

; --------------  BEGINING OF NCL SCRIPT ----------------


begin
;********************************************************
; read in netCDF file and make a loop for all time steps
;********************************************************
  in     = addfile("./wrfout_d01_2000-01-24_12:00:00.nc","r")


times = wrf_user_list_times(in)            ; get times in the file
ntimes = dimsizes(times)            ; number of times in the file
wind_speed = new(ntimes,float)            ; creation of a windspeed vector at each time step
;print(ntimes)

do it = 0,ntimes-1                  ;Loop for the time: it= starting time
print("Working on time " + it )
time = it


;************************************************
;  - Select lon & lat of the point of interest -
;************************************************


 res = True      
 res@returnInt = True               ; False : return real values, True: return interger values
 lat = 32.5                  ; Latitude of the point of interest
 lon = -87                  ; Longitude of the point of interest
 point = wrf_user_ll_to_ij(in,lon,lat,res)       ; wrf_user_ll_to_ij(nc_file,lon,lat,opt)
 
 x = point(1)
 y = point(0)

 print("X location is: " + x)            ; print the value of X at the screen
 print("Y location is: " + y)            ; print the value of Y at the screen


;************************************************
;  - extract wind components and unstagger them -
;************************************************


; ----- Hence U and V are staggered, we need to  average them to get the point on the mass grid using wrf_user_unstagger

  U     = wrf_user_getvar(in, "U", time)
  ua_in = wrf_user_unstagger(U,U@stagger)
  ua    = ua_in(0:0,y,x)             ;ua(bottom_up,grid_lon,grid_lat)
  V     = wrf_user_getvar(in, "V", time)
  va_in = wrf_user_unstagger(V,V@stagger)      
  va    = va_in(0:0,x,y)            ;va(bottom_up,grid_lon,grid_lat)
  wind_speed(it) = sqrt(ua^2+va^2)
  copy_VarCoords(ua,wind_speed(it))                         ; copy coord vars to speed





end do                     ; end of time loop
;************************************************
;  - Write wind speed in ascii file -
;************************************************




  XLAT = lat              ; (nlat)
  YLON = lon              ; (mlon)
  windspeed   = wind_speed             ; (ntim,nlat,mlon)

  dimwindspeed  = dimsizes(windspeed)
  ntim  = dimwindspeed(0)
  nXLAT  = dimwindspeed(1)
  mYLON  = dimwindspeed(2)

  npts  = nXLAT*mYLON        ; total number of grid points

  fName = "foo.txt"
  data  = new( npts, "string")

  npt   = -1

  do nl=0,nXLAT-1         
    do ml=0,mYLON-1

       npt  = npt + 1   
       data(npt) = sprinti("%0.5i", (npt+1) ) 
       data(npt) = data(npt) + sprintf("%7.1f ",XLAT(nl))
       data(npt) = data(npt) + sprintf("%7.1f ",YLON(ml))

      do nt=0,ntim-1
         data(npt) = data(npt) + sprintf("%10.3f ", windspeed(nt,nl,ml))
      end do
    end do
  end do

  asciiwrite (fName , data)


; --------------  END OF NCL SCRIPT ----------------

end


Thank you very much!

Greg

[jimmyc]

what was the error?

[leroygr]

Here is what i get when i run the script:

Code: Select all

[greg@Uranus:~/WRF/post_processing/NCL/scripts]$ ncl wind_speed2.ncl
 Copyright (C) 1995-2011 - All Rights Reserved
 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
 NCAR Command Language Version 6.0.0
 The use of this software is governed by a License Agreement.
 See http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/ for more details.


Variable: times
Type: string
Total Size: 20 bytes
            5 values
Number of Dimensions: 1
Dimensions and sizes:   [5]
Coordinates:
Number Of Attributes: 2
  description :   times in file
  _FillValue :   missing
(0)   2000-01-24_12:00:00
(1)   2000-01-24_15:00:00
(2)   2000-01-24_18:00:00
(3)   2000-01-24_21:00:00
(4)   2000-01-25_00:00:00
(0)   Working on time 0
(0)   X location is: 19
(0)   Y location is: 21
(0)   Working on time 1
(0)   X location is: 19
(0)   Y location is: 21
(0)   Working on time 2
(0)   X location is: 19
(0)   Y location is: 21
(0)   Working on time 3
(0)   X location is: 19
(0)   Y location is: 21
(0)   Working on time 4
(0)   X location is: 19
(0)   Y location is: 21
fatal:Subscript out of range, error in subscript #0
fatal:An error occurred reading dimwindspeed
fatal:Execute: Error occurred at or near line 87 in file wind_speed2.ncl


Thank you!

[mallesh4science]

Dear Leroygr,

I am also facing the same problem. How did you resolve it.

Regards,
Malleswararao

[bradyhalvorson]

I'm not sure if you ever solved this for yourself but I figured I would post my solution to help others.

I believe the error was due to the wind_speed variable only having 1 dimension (the data itself) and not 3 as was assumed in your code. If you set nXLAT = 1 and mYLON = 1 and then change line 106 to have nt as the only input in windspeed, the code runs fine for me. This seemed like a simplification but you're only interested in data at one point so I'm not sure why you would need to carry over the location data from U because the location is what you specified at the beginning.

I also had to change your variable wind_speed to wind_speed_var due to the fact that wind_speed is now a function in NCL and will produce an error otherwise.

Code: Select all

;************************************************************************************
;* NCL script to generate netCDF file containing wind speed at specific location    *
;* Example for wrfout_d01_2000-01-24_12:00:00.nc                                    *
;*                                        *
;************************************************************************************


; --------------  LOAD FUNCTIONS AND PROCEDURES ----------------

load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm/gsn_code.ncl"
load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm/gsn_csm.ncl"
load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/csm/contributed.ncl"
load "$NCARG_ROOT/lib/ncarg/nclscripts/wrf/WRFUserARW.ncl"

; --------------  BEGINING OF NCL SCRIPT ----------------


begin
;********************************************************
; read in netCDF file and make a loop for all time steps
;********************************************************
  in     = addfile("./wrfout_d01_2018-06-19_06:00:00.nc","r")


times = wrf_user_list_times(in)            ; get times in the file
ntimes = dimsizes(times)            ; number of times in the file
wind_speed_var = new(ntimes,float)            ; creation of a windspeed vector at each time step
;print(ntimes)

do it = 0,ntimes-1                  ;Loop for the time: it= starting time
print("Working on time " + it )
time = it


;************************************************
;  - Select lon & lat of the point of interest -
;************************************************


 res = True
 res@returnInt = True               ; False : return real values, True: return interger values
 lat = 44.3                  ; Latitude of the point of interest
 lon = -94.4                 ; Longitude of the point of interest
 point = wrf_user_ll_to_ij(in,lon,lat,res)       ; wrf_user_ll_to_ij(nc_file,lon,lat,opt)

 x = point(1)
 y = point(0)


 print("X location is: " + x)            ; print the value of X at the screen
 print("Y location is: " + y)            ; print the value of Y at the screen


;************************************************
;  - extract wind components and unstagger them -
;************************************************


; ----- Hence U and V are staggered, we need to  average them to get the point on the mass grid using wrf_user_unstagger

  U     = wrf_user_getvar(in, "U", time)
  ua_in = wrf_user_unstagger(U,U@stagger)
  ua    = ua_in(0:0,y,x)             ;ua(bottom_up,grid_lon,grid_lat)
  V     = wrf_user_getvar(in, "V", time)
  va_in = wrf_user_unstagger(V,V@stagger)
  va    = va_in(0:0,x,y)            ;va(bottom_up,grid_lon,grid_lat)
  wind_speed_var(it) = sqrt(ua^2+va^2)
  copy_VarCoords(ua,wind_speed_var(it))                         ; copy coord vars to speed





end do                     ; end of time loop
;************************************************
;  - Write wind speed in ascii file -
;************************************************




  XLAT = lat              ; (nlat)
  YLON = lon              ; (mlon)
  windspeed   = wind_speed_var             ; (ntim,nlat,mlon)

  dimwindspeed  = dimsizes(windspeed)
  ntim  = dimwindspeed(0)
  nXLAT  = 1
  mYLON  = 1

  npts  = nXLAT*mYLON        ; total number of grid points

  fName = "foo.txt"
  data  = new( npts, "string")

  npt   = -1

  do nl=0,nXLAT-1
    do ml=0,mYLON-1

       npt  = npt + 1
       data(npt) = sprinti("%0.5i", (npt+1) )
       data(npt) = data(npt) + sprintf("%7.1f ",XLAT(nl))
       data(npt) = data(npt) + sprintf("%7.1f ",YLON(ml))

      do nt=0,ntim-1
         data(npt) = data(npt) + sprintf("%11.3f ", windspeed(nt))
      end do
    end do
  end do

  asciiwrite (fName , data)


; --------------  END OF NCL SCRIPT ----------------

end