MPAS Limited-Area - v2.1

MPAS Limited-Area is a python tool that takes an MPAS global grid and produces a regional area grid given a region specifications. Regions can be specified in a number of different ways, making limited-area extensible and flexible.

Download and Installing

To download this command line script, clone this repository into the location of your choosing. To install it, add the base directory to your path environment variable:

$ git clone git@github.com:MiCurry/MPAS-Limited-Area.git
$ setenv PATH ${PATH}:/path/to/MPAS-Limited-Area

Then, run the create_region command-line script:

$ # Running the script with no arguments will produce a usage output
Usage: create_region [-h] [-v VERBOSE] points grid create_region
create_region: error: the following arguments are required: points, grid

Note: It may be necessary to install the dependencies for this program if they have not been currently installed by you, or your administrator. You can install all the dependencies for this repository by running pip install -r requirements.txt. This will install all the necessary dependencies needed to run this program.

It may also be necessary to update the Python 'shebang' (#!/usr/bin/env python) at the top of the create_region script, depending on your python environment. For instance, if you have multiple installations of python, you may need to specify which python to use within the shebang i.e.:

#!/user/bin/env python3

or

#!/user/bin/env python2

Running

create_region can create regional subsets from global MPAS grid files or MPAS static files.

At any point in time, you can pass the -h or --help flag to create_region to generate a help message, usage statement and a list of options. The command line usage is:

$ create_region [options] points grid

Where points is a points specification file, and where grid is a global MPAS NetCDF grid file. You'll find example points file in the points-example directory within the docs directory of this repository and below in the Points Syntax section.

Notes on creating regions from .grid.nc files

When creating region subsets from grid.nc files, it is important to take a few things into account. Because of the way the init_atmosphere model interpolates some static data, it is possible to create incorrect static feilds on a concave mesh, during the static interpolation of the init_atmosphere model.

Creating a mesh that is either concave in overall shape, or spans significant longitudes near the poles will cause init_atmosphere model to incorrectly interpolate some static fields.

Thus, when subsetting a region of a grid.nc file, it is import to ensure the subsetted region's shape is convex in shape.

If you would like to have a convex region or region that spans many longitudes you can avoid this problem to by simply using this program on meshes that contain statc fields (i.e. static.nc files).

Notes on Creating Large Regions (nCells >= 2,000,000)

If the region you create is significantly large ( >= 2,000,000 grid cells) you will need to change the NetCDF file version of the regional grid file. To do this, you can change the format keyword argument of the LimitedArea initialization call within the create_region script to NETCDF3_64BIT_DATA:

regional_area = LimitedArea(args.grid,
                            args.points,
                            format='NETCDF3_64BIT_DATA',
                            **kwargs)

Points (pts) Syntax

A number of pts syntax files are available in docs/points-examples.

The points syntax is a simple file format that can be used to specify a region. There are a number of different methods for defining or generating a region. Currently these include: Polygon/Custom, Ellipse, Circle, and Channel.

Each method will differ slightly in the syntax used to describe a region, but a number of keywords will be required by each method.

Each pts file will need to specify the following keywords followed by an appropriate value:

1. Name: - The desired name of your region. The specified keyword will be appended to the outputed region.
2. Type: - The method for generating the region [custom/circle]
3. Point: - A latitude, longitude coordinate separated by a comma of a point that is inside the desired region. Note: For the circle method and ellipse method, this point will be used as the center of the circle and ellipse. Point is not used with the channel method.

The value after Name: will be the name of the new regional mesh.

If the Name within the pts file was set to be the following:

Name: region_name

Then the resulting regional MPAS grid will be named the following: region_name.grid.nc if the region was created from the x1.10242.grid.nc.

Polygon

A polygon points file would look like the following:

Name: Desired_name_of_region 
Type: custom
Point: lat, lon     # Point that inside the region
lat1, lon1          # List of points specifying the region
lat2, lon2
lat3, lon3
...
latN, LonN

For the polygon method, the value of Type: must be specified as custom. The value of Point: must be a latitude, longitude point that lies within the desired region in degrees.

After the Point specification, any number of coordinate points (in degrees) that define the desired boundary can be listed. Points should be listed in counter-clockwise order.

An example polygon method for defining CONUS region (conus.custom.pts):

Name: conus
Type: custom
Point: 40.0, -100.0
50.0, -129.0
50.0, -65.0
20.0, -65.0
20.0, -129.0

NOTE: When creating regional meshes with the polygon method it is necessary to not create concave regions. Doing so will result in MPAS init_atmosphere producing erroneous results while interpolating static fields. Please see the section on concave regions.

Circle

The circle method produces a regional circle subset of a global grid given a center point (Point) and a radius from that point (Radius).

An example circle points specification would look like the following:

Name: my_circle
Type: circle
Point: 53.5, -4.5
Radius: 655000.0 # Meters

Here Point is used to specify the center of the circle and Radius is used to specify the radius of the circle (in meters). NOTE: The radius must be larger then at least the smallest grid cell, else unexpected behavior will occur.

An example circle method for defining a circle around Colorado, USA is:

Name: colorado
Type: circle
Point: 40.0, -105.0
radius: 400000.0

Ellipse

The ellipse method produces an ellipse shape region and is specified by a semi-major and semi-minor axis length, as well as an orientation:

Name: my_ellipse
Type: ellipse
Point: 55.0, 93.0        # Latitude, Longitude (degrees)
Semi-major-axis: 6500000 # Meters
Semi-minor-axis: 3000000 # Meters
Orientation-angle: 15.0     # Clockwise rotation from due north (degrees)

Equatorial Channel

The equatorial channel method can be used to specify a channel parallel to the equator, across longitudes and between two latitude points.

For instance, one can specify a region between the tropics as:

Name: tropics
Type: channel
Upper-lat: 23.43676
lower-lat: -23.43676

Caution on creating channels of grid.nc files

Depending on the location of a specified channel, erroneous results can be caused during some interpolation static fields by the init_atmosphere core. This will cause erroneous results within result static.nc files and will cause resulting files to be unusable.

Thus, it is highly recommended to only use the channel method upon static.nc files. Doing so will avoid this problem and will also save time interpolating the static fields on different regions.

Reporting Bugs

If you encounter a bug and wish to report it, please do so on this Github repository's Issues page! Thank you!

Release Notes

2.1

• Regions created from init.nc files are named as name.init.nc

2.0

• Added ability to subset fields dimensioned by time

1.1

• Change units for specifying the radius in the circle points method from kilometers to meters.

1.0

• Initial public release
• Subsets mpas grid.nc and static.nc files