RAMS Input Data

Types of input data Meteorological data  First guess gridded data – NCEP, ECMWF, etc.  Surface observations (single level measurements at the ground)  Vertical profile observations (rawindsonde, multi-level met tower, wind profiler, RASS, sodar, etc.) Surface characteristic data  Topography  Water surface temperature  Land use/vegetation type  NDVI  Soil type

Easiest to use in GRIB format  NCEP Reanalysis/Reanalysis2/GFS data – GFS – ftp://ftpprd.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/gfs/prodftp://ftpprd.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/gfs/prod  NCAR – some datasets online, others can be purchased  ECMWF – must go through EU country, difficult and expensive  INPE/CPTEC (Brasíl) – operational forecasts for South America, not sure if/how they distribute  Others? Where to get data? – Gridded data

Where to get data? - Surface, upper air A variety of formats available:  NCAR – past year available online for free, past years can be purchased ADP format – converter available on our web site  NCEP – current global obs in METAR format  Others?

Where to get data? - Topography Global 30-second resolution (about 1km) dataset available on our web site Many other sources Typically, local sources may have higher resolution

Where to get data? – Water temp Global 1-degree resolution climatological dataset available on our web site (monthly) Sea-surface temperature sometimes available in first-guess files NCEP has separate files (somewhere!) None of these sources do a good job with inland water (bays, rivers, lakes) because of coarse resolution Some higher-resolution, satellite-derived datasets available for US coast, any for Colombia?

Where to get data? – Land use Global 30-second resolution (about 1km) dataset available on our web site from USGS Any simulation should be carefully checked Many regions outside of the US used old data sources Local sources usually best for small regions Must be able to translate to RAMS vegetation class categories

Where to get data? – NDVI Only needed in RAMS v6.0 Global 30-second resolution (about 1km) dataset available on our web site (monthly) Used to determine several vegetation characteristics (roughness length, albedo, etc.) Should be checked carefully for any simulation For short runs and small areas, it may be better to use a specified constant value

Where to get data? – Soil type More specifically, soil textural class Only used in RAMS v6.0 Global dataset about 5km resolution available on our web site from UN/FAO Simulations not usually very sensitive, unless soil type is very wrong (e.g., sand vs. clay)

Format Conversions - Met data RAMS requires meteorological data to be in RALPH format (being renamed to GDF) Text format that is easily edited and transferred. Document describes the details Examples:

RALPH (GDF) gridded data

RALPH (GDF) surface obs data WINDSPEED m/s WIND_DIRECTION deg TEMPERATURE C DEWPOINT C STN_PRES Pa FTTJ DFFD GOGS GABS GBYD DRRN

RALPH (GDF) upper air data

Format Conversions - Met data First-guess  GRIB format – fdgrib (from our web site)  Other formats – custom converter required Surface/upper-air observations  NCAR ADP format – dprep-ncar (from our web site - soon!)  Other formats - dprep-generic (from our web site)

Format Conversions – Surface data RAMS requires topography, SST, etc. in “blocked” form. Example file name: EL40N100W

Format Conversions – Surface data Converters  Topography, SST – mktopo.f (from our web site)  Land use – special version of mktopo.f (contact me)  Soil, NDVI for v6.0 – new version of mktopo.f (make_blocks), will be on our web site soon.