GFS data for MCC WRF forecasts

The forecasts on the MCC web page (http://mathsci.ucd.ie/met/mcc-forecast.html) use global forecast data from NOAA's Global Forecast System (GFS: http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/index.php?branch=GFS). GFS data are available on a global 0.25 degree grid, every hour.

GFS forecast data should be available for download 4 hours after forecast analysis time:

(ftp://ftp.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/gfs/prod)

I'd like to download a subset of the GFS data to run the MCC WRF forecast at a higher resolution for Ireland. To do this, I am going to use NOMADS g2subs

http://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/filter_gfs_0p25.pl?dir=%2Fgfs.2016062906

• Use "make subregion": lon:-55 to 25, lat: 25 to 70
• Select the option: "Show the URL only for web programming"
• Open a terminal and set the data URL, then use curl to retrieve the data file:

bash$ URL="http://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/filter_gfs_0p25.pl..."
bash$ curl “$URL” -o my_grib_file1

This works!

Notes:

• Don't use the analysis data file - it doesn't contain soil data.
• You can see which fields are in the GFS file by using the WPS g2print.exe command.
• Using all levels, all variables, and subregion (lon:-55 to 25, lat: 25 to 70) reduced the size of the analysis file from 176M to 24M. The file size becomes even smaller by requesting less variables.