new user

[Steve Cocks <scocks@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I am a new user of Ferret, and in a middle of a number of problems.    I
ran a script to concantenate 16 files into one; each file is a
particular time step for a given year, julian date and hour.  Each file
carries within it the variables time (unit="yyyydddhh", range is 1),
lat(units="degree-north", range is 1-171), lon(units="degrees-east",
range is 1-360), u(units=""(m/s)^2) and v(units=""(m/s)^2").  The goal I
had was to run a script to concatenate these files into 1 file with all
of the above variables but with a time range of 16, or l=1:16.  The
script I used is included below:
***********************************************************
define axis/t="1-jan-2001:00":"4-jan-2001:18":6/unit=hours t96hours
define grid/t=t96hours gg

let U_T=t[g=gg]*0 + U
let V_T=t[g=gg]*0 + V

set variable/title="U"/units="m^2/s^2" U_T
set variable/title="V"/units="m^2/s^2" V_T

use "/rlp/scocks/Scatterometer/2001/00/gcv_QSCAT_200100100.nc"
save/file=Qscat_concat.nc/append U_T, V_T
.
.    ETC ETC ETC, boy the list get's long
.
use "/rlp/scocks/Scatterometer/2001/18/gcv_QSCAT_200100418.nc"
save/file=Qscat_concat.nc/append U_T, V_T
quit
************************************************************
This script did indeed write a concat file with l=1:16 although when
each source file was read, the note

"*** NOTE: Units on axis "time" are not recognized: yyyydddhh
 *** NOTE: They will not be convertible:
save/file=Qscat_concat.nc/append U_T, V_T
 LISTing to file Qscat_concat.nc
 **TMAP ERR: Requested data range is outside of data set limits
             Expected: U_T[I= 1 : 360 ] Found: U_T[I= 111 : 271 ]"


appeared indicating an error.  When I tried to look at my data, I found
that my Lon and Lat variables had been restricted to a much smaller lat
and lon range.  Also, my other Go scripts all of sudden didn't recognize
the Lon (and probably Lat as well) variable.  The comparisons of ncdump
-c on the source file and the new concatentated file showed big
differences in variable ranges (excluding the change in time as was
expected).  My questions are:

1)  What happened, and how can I concatenate the files without losing
the lat and lon data, yet have the variables with l=1:16?
2)  Is there a way to define string variables, say YYYY, DDD, HH, and
then substitute into a loop so I won't have to write down every single
file into the program?

Would greatly appreciate some insight into this matter.  Thanks in
advance.

Scocks
Texas A&M University