Using Windows-based GrADS to examine TRMM orbit data files

[Christopher Lynnes]

On Jul 21, 2008, at 1:10 PM, Arlindo da Silva wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 8:11 AM, Mr Aaron Pratt
> <aspratt2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am trying to create plots derived from the TRMM 2A12 orbital
>> product (it's
>> the hydrometeor profile data) . It's not gridded data, but rather
>> in orbital
>> swaths.
>
> Well, in a way swath data is gridded, just the I/J axis do not
> correspond to lon/lat...
>
>
> Brian, Jennifer: what are your plans for swath data? Do you see it as
> gridded or station data? Both representations can be quite useful,
> depending on the nature of the dataset.
>
>     Arlindo


Along those lines, we have been experimenting at the GES DISC with
reformatting HDF-EOS swath data into NetCDF CF-1 compliant format,
using CF-1's two-dimensional latitude and longitude variables, i.e.,
WITHOUT explicitly reprojecting the data.  Tools such as IDV and
McIDAS-V have been able to understand this to the extent that they can
ingest the netCDF versions of the data and plot the data correctly on
a map.  Ferret can read and plot them, but with simple x-y axes, not
on a map. Unfortunately, I have been unable to use sdfopen in GrADS to
read these files ("SDF file has no discernable X coordinate.").  It
would be nice if...

Here is an example of the on-the-fly reformatting of AIRS Level 2
swath to NetCDF:

http://aurapar2u.ecs.nasa.gov/airspar1/daac-bin/OTF/HTTP_services.cgi?FILENAME=%2Fdata%2Fs4pa%2FAqua_AIRS_Level2%2FAIRX2RET.005%2F2008%2F202%2FAIRS.2008.07.20.094.L2.RetStd.v5.2.2.0.G08203122008.hdf&LABEL=AIRS.2008.07.20.094.L2.RetStd.v5.2.2.0.G08203122008.nc&SERVICE=NetCDF&VERSION=1



--
Christopher Lynnes             NASA/GSFC, Code 610.2
301-614-5185