[gradsusr] 365 day calendar question

[Eric Altshuler]

Andrew,

If you're only looking at monthly data, the 365_day_calendar option will have no effect on the analysis.

The 365_day_calendar option is needed for monthly data if you want to open the monthly dataset at the same time as you have opened a daily dataset that uses the 365 day calendar. This is because grads will not allow multiple calendars to be in effect during the same grads session. Either all open datasets have to use the regular calendar, or they all have to use the 365 day calendar. This also means that if you want to open other monthly datasets that don't have the 365_day_calendar option in their ctl files, you should not have it in your ctl file for this dataset. You could even keep two ctl files for the monthly data, one with the 365_day_calendar option and the other without it.

Best regards,

Eric L. Altshuler
Assistant Research Scientist
Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies
4041 Powder Mill Road, Suite 302
Calverton, MD 20705-3106
USA

E-mail: ela at cola.iges.org
Phone: (301) 902-1257
Fax: (301) 595-9793

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Friedman" <andfried at berkeley.edu>
To: "GrADS Users Forum" <gradsusr at gradsusr.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2012 4:46:07 PM
Subject: [gradsusr] 365 day calendar question

Hi GrADS users,

I have a small question about best practices for writing a control file for 365 day calendar output.

I've been succesfully able to open CMIP3 model monthly netcdf files with a 365 calendar using xdfopen,
following previous instructions on the GrADS forum:
http://gradsusr.org/pipermail/gradsusr/2011-June/013406.html

with a line like 'TDEF time 1560 LINEAR 16Jan1870 1mo' in the control file

Is it important that I also include the line
' OPTIONS 365_day_calendar' 
in the control file when I am opening monthly data? Or is this only important for daily data?
It doesn't seem to cause any changes, but I'm writing control files for many files and am wondering if there could be some differences in the time axis. 

Thanks much,
Andrew


Andrew Friedman
Graduate Student, UC Berkeley Geography
andfried at berkeley.edu
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