Introduction: Data Formats

Forecast Data

The gridded forecast data used in MET generally begins in GRIB1 format. PCP-Combine converts this to a NetCDF format that can be used in the statistical verification tools (Point-Stat, Grid-Stat, Wavelet-Stat, and MODE). However, each of the statistical verification tools can also read GRIB1 directly.

Users may choose to reformat their gridded data from some other format to the intermediate NetCDF format used by the PCP-Combine tool for use with MET. This supported NetCDF format is rather limited in version 2.0 but will be generalized to support CF-Compliant NetCDF files in future versions. Also, support for GRIB2 will be added in future versions.

Point Observations

Point observations used in MET may either be in PrepBufr format (converted to NetCDF in PB2NC) or in ASCII format (converted to NetCDF in ASCII2NC). The NetCDF output of PB2NC and ASCII2NC is used as input to Point-Stat.

Gridded Analyses

Gridded analyses can be used for model evaluation in MET. These are generally in GRIB1 format. However, the NetCDF output from PCP-Combine may also be used.