Oklahoma Mesonet MDF Data

Overview

Program to convert Oklahoma Mesonet MDF files into DART observation sequence files.

Data sources

The observation files can be obtained from the Oklahoma Mesonet archive using urls of the format: http://www.mesonet.org/index.php/dataMdfMts/dataController/getFile/YYYYMMDDHHMM/mdf/TEXT where YYYYMMDDHHMM is the date and time of the desired set of observations. Files are available every 5 minutes.

If you are located outside of Oklahoma or are going to use this for a non-research purpose see this web page for information about access: http://www.mesonet.org/index.php/site/about/data_access_and_pricing

Static fields are drawn from the station description file provided by the OK Mesonet. Update the local file from: http://www.mesonet.org/index.php/api/siteinfo/from_all_active_with_geo_fields/format/csv

Programs

The programs in the DART/observations/ok_mesonet/ directory extract data from the distribution files and create DART observation sequence (obs_seq) files. Build them in the work directory by running the ./quickbuild.sh script. In addition to the converters, the advance_time and obs_sequence_tool utilities will be built.

The converter is a preliminary version which has no namelist inputs. It has hard-coded input and output filenames. It always reads a data file named okmeso_mdf.in and creates an output file named obs_seq.okmeso. The converter also requires a text file with the location of all the observating stations, called geoinfo.csv.

The converter creates observations of the following types:

  • LAND_SFC_ALTIMETER

  • LAND_SFC_U_WIND_COMPONENT

  • LAND_SFC_V_WIND_COMPONENT

  • LAND_SFC_TEMPERATURE

  • LAND_SFC_SPECIFIC_HUMIDITY

  • LAND_SFC_DEWPOINT

  • LAND_SFC_RELATIVE_HUMIDITY

Example data files are in the data directory. Example scripts for converting batches of these files are in the shell_scripts directory. These are NOT intended to be turnkey scripts; they will certainly need to be customized for your use. There are comments at the top of the scripts saying what options they include, and should be commented enough to indicate where changes will be likely to need to be made.

The expected usage pattern is that a script will copy, rename, or make a symbolic link from the actual input file (which often contains a timestamp in the name) to the fixed input name before conversion, and move the output file to an appropriate filename before the next invocation of the converter. If an existing observation sequence file of the same output name is found when the converter is run again, it will open that file and append the next set of observations to it.