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(RESOLVED) GFS Required Variables for Initial Condition and WRF Contour Condition

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G

Gabriel Cassol

New member
Hello good afternoon!

Can you tell me which variables and which vertical levels of the GFS model are needed to use as the boundary condition and initial condition of WRF?

Below is a list of all GFS 0.25 GRIB variables, where you can filter and choose just a few variables instead of downloading them all.

This same list can be found on the NOMADS website: https://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/filter_gfs_0p25.pl

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Hi,
Please take a look at this FAQ on this forum site, regarding the mandatory surface and atmospheric data for running WRF:
https://forum.mmm.ucar.edu/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=5381

If you download the standard GFS data, the 3D (atmospheric) levels are 1000, 975, 950, 925, 900, 850, 800, 750, 700, 650, 600, 550, 500, 450, 400, 350, 300, 250, 200, 150, 100, 70, 50, 30, 20, 10, 7, 5, 3, 2, and 1 hPa, along with 4 soil levels, surface values, and the 2m and 10m fields mentioned in the link above. These levels seem to work well.

However, trying to download each variable/level actually seems like a lot more work than it's worth. GFS data input files typically aren't very large for a global domain, and don't contain much more than I've mentioned above. I'm not sure it's going to save a lot of space to try to do this manually. Have you tried to simply grab the full global input data files?
 
kwerner said:
Hi,
Please take a look at this FAQ on this forum site, regarding the mandatory surface and atmospheric data for running WRF:
https://forum.mmm.ucar.edu/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=5381

If you download the standard GFS data, the 3D (atmospheric) levels are 1000, 975, 950, 925, 900, 850, 800, 750, 700, 650, 600, 550, 500, 450, 400, 350, 300, 250, 200, 150, 100, 70, 50, 30, 20, 10, 7, 5, 3, 2, and 1 hPa, along with 4 soil levels, surface values, and the 2m and 10m fields mentioned in the link above. These levels seem to work well.

However, trying to download each variable/level actually seems like a lot more work than it's worth. GFS data input files typically aren't very large for a global domain, and don't contain much more than I've mentioned above. I'm not sure it's going to save a lot of space to try to do this manually. Have you tried to simply grab the full global input data files?
Click to expand...

Understand. I read the post about "What fields are mandatory for running WRF?", But just one question, do these fields cite apply to any global model that will be used as initial condition and boundary data? Because I've been looking at the Vtables that are available in WPS, and GFS's Vtable has more variables than ECMWF's Vtable, so I didn't quite understand it.

And answering your question, I currently use full GFS data to use as a WRF boundary condition, but each 0.25 GRIB is about 300 mb, so for those who don't have a fast internet it may take hours to download a few. GFS forecast hours, and then start running WRF. So I asked if I could select only the variables needed to run WRF.
 
Different global models provide a variety of data, so it may be that the GFS data type you are looking at happen to provide more variables than the particular ECMWF data files you are viewing. I'm not sure exactly which site you are using to obtain your GFS files, but if you aren't already looking here:
https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds084.1/
perhaps that site may be helpful in providing some additional information, if you're interested.
 
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