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Decoders release 2.4.0

Hiya,

I'm pleased to announce the beta release of Decoders 2.4.0.  This
release includes many changes as well as a new program, 'gribtocdl'.
Most of the changes are to add parameters and levels for new models
and grids, such as the AVN model on a 1-degree grid (avn-1.0x1.0.cdl).
The new 'gribtocdl' program creates a CDL file from GRIB files.  Much
of the work was contributed by Arild Burud and Terje Reite from the
Norwegian Service Centre for Climate Modeling at the Norwegian
Meteorological Institute. I wish to thank these developers on behalf
of the Unidata community.

Since this is a beta release, I would appreciate help in testing it
and reporting problems.

A couple of gribtocdl notes:

- Use a representative dataset when creating a CDL file with gribtocdl. If the 
  dataset is missing a variable, it will also be missing in the CDL.

- Consider the created CDL as a starting point, minor tweaks are usually
  needed.

- The external table file feature for variable name override has not
  been tested much, but needs to be used with gribtocdl as well as
  gribtonc to override variable names.

- Default variable names follow NUWG conventions.

I would have liked to test the code more exhaustively but did not want
to further delay the release. If problems are found, please send email
to address@hidden with information necessary to reproduce
the problem, error messages, and log messages.

Thanks,
Robb...


Included man page from gribtocdl:

User Commands                                        GRIBTOCDL(1)

NAME
     gribtocdl - create netCDF CDL-file from GRIB dataset

SYNOPSIS
     gribtocdl [-v] [-g tabfile] [-q qspecs] gribfiles

DESCRIPTION
     This program decodes GRIB products and generates  to  stdout
     the  corresponding  CDL code that can be used in gribtonc(1)
     to convert the GRIB products to netCDF format.  The  default
     parameter  translation  is made according to a definition by
     UCAR, but the user may supply  specific  translations  in  a
     separate  file  by  the -g tabfile option. The user-supplied
     translations will override the default ones.

OPTIONS
     -v   Verbose, reports decoding steps to stderr.

     -g tabfile
          Use GRIB-netcdf translation defined in this  file.  The
          format of this file is described below.

     -q qspecs
          Specification for how to expand so-called quasi-regular
          or thinned grids into rectangular grids.  This argument
          is a comma-delimited text  string  that  specifies  the
          method  of interpolation used (currently lin for linear
          or cub for cubic), and the latitude and  longitude  in-
          crements  in  degrees  for  the  resulting  grid  (e.g.
          dlat=2.5,dlon=5.0).


FORMAT OF GRIB TO NETCDF TRANSLATION
     The format of the translation table  is  as  follows:   Each
     line contains
         GRIB parameter number
         netCDF parameter name
         netCDF long description
         netCDF units
         An optional comment

     These are all separated by semicolon  (";").  To  comment  a
     whole  line, put any letter or special character (i.e. not a
     digit) in front of it.  Trailing spaces are  ignored  before
     each  semicolon,  but  not  after.  The GRIB number may have
     spaces in front.  Parameters found in the separate file take
     precedence over the default parameter table, those not list-
     ed in the separate file are unchanged.  All parameters  will
     be  named  with  a  level suffix in addition to the name as-
     signed in the separate file.

EXAMPLE
     The command
         gribtocdl -v -g my.tab sst.grib > sst.cdl

     will decode  the  products  in  sst.grib  and  generate  the
     corresponding  CDL  code  into file sst.cdl. The file my.tab
     contains a specific conversion table to be used when  naming
     a  parameter from GRIB. Later the GRIB file may be converted
     to netCDF by using gribtonc:

         gribtonc -v -g my.tab sst.cdl sst.nc < sst.grib

     The file my.tab looks like this:
         Grib;netCDF;long name               ;units;comments
          31 ;CI    ;Sea-ice cover           ;none ;(0-1)
          34 ;SSTK  ;Sea surface temperature ;K    ;
         151 ;MSL   ;Mean sea-level pressure ;Pa   ;
         167 ;T2M   ;2 meter temperature     ;K    ;

SEE ALSO
     gribdump(1), gribtonc(1), netcdf(3), udunits(3)

DIAGNOSTICS
     Error messages and log messages are written to stderr.



===============================================================================
Robb Kambic                                Unidata Program Center
Software Engineer III                      Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research
address@hidden             WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
===============================================================================