Writing non-isobaric data to WPS intermediate format

Hi there,

Referring to the section 'Writing Meteorological Data to the Intermediate Format' in Chapt. 3 of the Users Guide:

When writing data given on pressure levels to the intermediate format I write the pressure in Pa to the xlvl field. If I am trying to write non-isobaric data to the intermediate format, what value do I put in the field xlvl?

More generally, is there more comprehensive information about writing to the intermediate data format available anywhere?

Regards
Chris

Unfortunately, besides a few example codes, Chapter 3 of the Users's Guide is more or less all the documentation that is available on the intermediate format. For non-isobaric datasets, you can assign floating-point representations of sequential integers, beginning at 1.0, to the xlvl field. If I recall correctly, the real.exe program will work out whether the xlvl values increase with height or decrease with height, so you should be able to either use 1.0 as the lowest level or as the top-of-the-model level.

Thanks, that helps a lot.

From the limited documentation in the User's Guide it appears that I need to write all the 3D fields on the same set of (non-isobaric) levels? Is that correct, or is there some way of getting around this using appropriate METGRID.TBL options?

Chris