Program RAWINS is the third program in the suite of MM5 system programs. This program reads in output from program REGRID (REGRID_DOMAINx), and observations (radiosonde and surface reports), performs an objective analysis which blends first guess with observations, and outputs data on pressure levels again (just like it is from REGRID). You should not be here if you have not successfully run the REGRID program.

To learn more about how the RAWINS program works, please read Chapter 6 of the Tutorial Notes.

Where to Start?

First, go back to directory MM5V3, and download the RAWINS program tar file from NCAR's ftp site. Once you have it on your machine, type the following to unzip and untar it:

gunzip RAWINS.TAR.gz
tar -xvf RAWINS.TAR

After this, you should see a program directory RAWINS/ created in your working directory. cd to this directory:

cd RAWINS

and you should see the following files and subdirectories listed:

ls -l

-rwxr-xr-x   1 mesouser system      1686 Mar  2 13:07 CHANGES
-rwxr-xr-x   1 mesouser system      5592 Mar 12 17:28 Makefile
-rwxr-xr-x   1 mesouser system      4763 Mar  2 13:04 README
drwxr-xr-x   2 mesouser system      8192 Mar  2 13:04 Templates
-rwxr-xr-x   1 mesouser system      3516 Jul 31  1999 con.tbl
-rwxr-xr-x   1 mesouser system      2282 Jul 31  1999 map.tbl
drwxr-xr-x   2 mesouser system      8192 Mar  2 13:05 src
 

Read the README file in the directory.

Now download the test data input2rawins.tar.gz from the ftp site. After you gunzip and untar it, you should see the following files:

-rw-r--r--   1 mesouser system   4630360 Mar 22 16:31 RAOBS_A
-rw-r--r--   1 mesouser system   7026040 Mar 22 16:32 SFC3HR_A
-rw-r--r--   1 mesouser system   7502600 Mar 22 16:31 SFC6HR_A

Here RAOBS_A file contains upperair observations (or radiosondes) usually at 12 hour interval at 0000 and 1200 UTCs, SFC6HR_A is the surface data at 6 hourly interval at 0000, 0600, 1200, 1800 UTCs, and SFC3HR_A is the 3 hourly surface data at 0300, 0900, 15000 and 2100 UTCs. This is an sample of the observations archived at NCAR, and the data format is often referred to as ADP.

Now you are ready to work with RAWINS.

How to Run RAWINS?

1. Type to create rawins.deck:

make rawins.deck

If it is successful, the last message printed should say:

Making terrain deck for [your machine - whateven it may be]

2. Edit rawins.deck (the deck you see here is an example for Compaq machine) on your machine.

The default deck has almost everything set up to do the SOC case. You can check the parameters and namelist options defined in the deck against what is described in the Notes (Chapter 15). You need to edit a few script variables as highlighted in the example deck based on the input observation file names. Also check the parameter statement against what printed out in the regridder log file. Make sure that the horizontal grid dimensions in the parameter statement are identical to those in regridder's log file. The highlighted variables (in magenta) in the example deck are some typical ones you need to consider if you start to configure your own case. Other namelist variables can be left as they are unless there is special need to change them (such as those highlighted in different colors).

For complete references to all script variables and namelist variables, please see section 6.6 - 6.8 in Chapter 6 of the Tutorial Notes.

3. Type the following to compile and run the Rawins program:

rawins.deck >& log &

The rawins.deck will compile and run the program. If it is successful, you should see these new files in the directory:

-rw-r--r--   1 mesouser system   2177888 Mar 23 15:11 RAWINS_DOMAIN1
-rw-r--r--   1 mesouser system     444912 Mar 23 15:11 RAWOBS_DOMAIN1
-rw-r--r--   1 mesouser system    1 28952 Mar 23 15:11 SFC4DOBS_DOMAIN1
-rw-r--r--   1 mesouser system   4030560 Mar 23 15:11 SND.PLT
-rw-r--r--   1 mesouser system       74256 Mar 23 15:11 UPR4DOBS_DOMAIN1
-rw-r--r--   1 mesouser system     381848 Mar 23 15:11 rawins.print.out

where rawins.print.out is a log file of all print statements generated by RAWINS, and this is the file you should take a closer look if a RAWINS job fails. Near the end of the rawins.print.out file, you should see the following line if the job is finished correctly:

SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF PROGRAM RAWINS
STOP 99999

RAWINS_DOMAIN1 is the binary output file from RAWINS that contains 3-D pressure level analyses of winds, temperature, RH, geopotential height, and sea level pressure. RAWOBS_DOMAIN1 contains upperair observations as read by RAWINS, SFC4DOBS_DOMAIN1 and UPR4DOBS_DOMAIN1 are surface and upperair observations used by RAWINS in the objective analysis. SND.PLT is a plot file that contains soundings plotted in skew-T form (you can only obtain this file if you have NCAR Graphics on your machine, and you set IPLOT = T in the deck). If namelist variable F4D is set to T, one additional file should be present:

-rw-r--r--   1 mesouser system    543968 Mar 23 17:17 SFCFDDA_DOMAIN1

This is the surface analysis at 3 hourly intervals and may be used in MM5 to perform surface analysis nudging.

RAWINS doesn't generate analysis plots, unless you are doing autobogussing. To check whether your analysis is OK, you can run program GRAPH, if you have NCAR Graphics.

Miscellanies:

1. RAWINS program requires recompilation everytime your domain dimension changes. The horizontal dimensions (IMX and JMX) must be specified exactly as in the input data (REGRID_DOMAINx), while the vertical dimension (LMX) needs only be bigger than in the input data. If you are not sure what the horizontal dimensions are, check again the log file from program REGRID/regridder. These dimensional parameters are highlighted in the example deck.

2. If you have added pressure levels using regridder's namelist variable, new_levels_in_Pa, you will not need to add them again in RAWINS' deck using namelists NNEWPL and GNLVL.

3. In case you don't have one or both surface observation inputs, set namelists ISFCS3 and/or ISFCS6 = F in the RAWINS deck.

4. If your input data to REGRID do not have (good) surface wind analyses, then use IWIND = 2 in the namelist in RAWINS deck. This allows the 1000 mb winds to be used as a first guess for the surface wind analysis.

5. If you have an NCAR computing account, you can access ADP-format observations readily. You can use the fetch.job deck inside the RAWINS/Templates directory, or fetch-rawins-data.deck from /fs/othrorgs/home0/mesouser/MM5V3/Util directory on NCAR's Cray for this purpose. Variables that are required editting are highlighted in the sample deck. You may run this fetch job interactively or in batch mode on NCAR's computer. You may then ftp or rcp the data back to your local computer to run RAWINS.

NCAR ADP data catalogs are available for surface (lists A, E and B, F) and upperair (list A) data by clicking on the MASTER file link on each of above pages.

6. If your observation data's date is after April 1997 (ie, Lists E and F), you need to make a few changes to rawins.deck to accommodate this change.

7. For a brief  introduction to the RAWINS program, you can also view the bi-annual tutorial slides.

Trouble Shooting:

If you have run RAWINS successfully, move to the next program: INTERPF.

If you have questions, ask mesouser.