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20030611: importing and contouring data on GOES imagery

>From: Owen Cooper <address@hidden>
>Organization: Aeronomy Laboratory/NOAA
>Keywords: 200306112200.h5BM0fLd024027 McIDAS TXT2MD PTCON

Hi Owen,

>My next project with MCIDAS requires me to import an ACII file 
>containing latitude and longitude values (covering the northern 
>hemisphere, spaced every one degree) and the corresponding carbon 
>monoxide concentrations at each location (so 3 columns of data). I then 
>want to contour these values on top of GOES satellite imagery.

OK, this should be straigtforward.

>I'm wondering what the best approach would be. From what I have gathered 
>from the MCIDAS web pages, the best approach seems to be to read the 
>data into an MD file using TXT2MD and then plot the data using MDX.

Right.  The sequence would be:

- examine your data; does it look like surface data at all; if not, does
  it look like some other kind of data that McIDAS supports

- if the answer to the first step is no, then you have to design an MD
  file schema.  The easiest way to do this is to take an existing one
  and create a new one.  This is typically a matter of eliminating 
  a number of data keys and adding one or more of your own

- after you have made a new schema, you have to register it with in
  your SCHEMA file.  This is done with the SCHE command.

- next, you use TXT2MD to create an ouput MD file

- finally, you use PTCON to contour the data in the new MD file

>What do you think?

This shouldn't be too hard.  Let me know if you run into snags.

Tom