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Terrain height in mpas output

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pouwereou Nimon

New member
Good day Everybody,
Please, which parameter represents terrain height in history file?
In fact, I used ter "terrain height" from static.nc file, but was not able to plot it over my area of interest using plot_terrain.ncl script.

Thank you very much
 
The model history files don't provide terrain height as a separate field; however, you can obtain the effective terrain height from the lowest level in the 'zgrid' field, which gives the geometric heights of vertical layer interfaces: the lowest interface is essentially the terrain height.

It is worth noting that the lowest level in the 'zgrid' field will not match the 'ter' (i.e., terrain height) field in the "static" file, since the terrain is smoothed before vertical layers are generated. The number of smoothing passes applied to the terrain is controlled by the config_nsmterrain option in the &vertical_grid namelist group.

If you can describe in more detail what problem you were having with the plot_terrain.ncl script, we'd be glad to offer some further assistance.
 
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