GFS Reforecast V2/V12 Grib File Downloader

This package was originally defined to download gridded Global Forecast System (GFS) reforecast version 2 data provided by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agencys (NOAA) Climate Data Center (CDC).

Note: Reforecast version 2 has been deprecated in September 2020 and is no longer updated (see this note). However, the data is still available as for September 2022, but users should switch to the new GFS reforecast version 12 data set available via amazon S3. Thus, the package has been modified in September 2022 to allow for accessing the new version 12 data set. The updated package now requires Python version 3.6 or above.

Some more details about the most recent changes can be found in the CHANGELOG.md file.

Backwards compatability; version 2 vs. 12

Take care: To ensure backwards compatability the default behaviour of many functions is to download version 2 data.

• GFSV2_get: Uses version 2 by default. To get the new data set you must provide --version 12.
• GFSV2_bulk: Falls back to version 2 if you are using an existing config file.
• GFSV2_defaultconfig: Returns a config template which includes version = 12, thus defaults to the new version if used.

By default (if not changed) the final grib files contain the version information (starting with GFSV2_ and GFSV12_ respectively).

• Version 2: [would need to look it up]
• Version 12: Starts in the year 2000

Installation

The github repository contains the small python package which should be ready for installation. You can simply install the package by calling:

• pip install git+https://github.com/retostauffer/PyGFSV2.git

The setup.py script should automatically take care of the dependencies except wgrib2 which is used for subsetting (if configuration files with subset settings are used in GFSV2_bulk; see below). After installation you can try the installation (no subsetting) by calling:

• GFSV2_get --version 2 --step 12 24 --level 700 850 --param tmp_pres --date 2005-01-01

Requirements

Requires the following python packages:

• Python version 3.6 or above.
• pycurl (and standard libs like datetime, ConfigParser, argparse,logging)
• If subsetting is used (see GFSV2_bulk) the wgrib2 executable has to be callable (see CPC wgrib2 readme).

Usage

The GFSV2 python package provides a set of functions and three executables called GFSV2_defaultconfig, GFSV2_get and GFSV2_bulk for convenient data processing.

GFSV2_get executable

The GFSV2_get executable can be used to download specific manually defined subsets of the reforecast. This can be handy during the development/specification process. However, if you would like to download larger amounts of data please have a look at the GFSV2_bulk description below!

Basic usage (shows usage help):

• GFSV2_get or GFSV2_get -h

There are two required input arguments to GFSV2_get. One is the -p/--param input, the other one is the -d/--date input. Both can contain one or more values. --param specifies which parameters or variables you would like to download, --date the dates of the model initialization. A list/description of all available parameters can be found here. The --date arguments have to be of type YYYY-mm-dd. As an example let's download tmax_2m for January 1 2014:

• GFSV2_get --version 12 --param tmax_2m --date 2014-01-01
• GFSV2_get -v 12 -p tmax_2m -d 2014-01-01

In addition, a -s/--steps argument can be given. The steps are the forecast lead times (e.g., 24 for the forecast 24 hours after initialization). Several steps can be defined:

• GFSV2_get -v 12 -p tmax_2m -d 2014-02-01 -s 24 48

By default only mean and sprd files (ensemble mean and ensemble spread) will be downloaded. If the individual members and the control run are required (10+1) the -m/--members flag has to be set:

• GFSV2_get -v 12 -p tmax_2m -d 2014-02-05 -s 24 -m

Downloading two different parameters for two different dates, only +24h forecast:

• GFSV2_get -v 12 -p tmax_2m cape_sfc -d 2014-02-01 2014-02-02 -s 24

For pressure level variables (e.g, ugrd_pres, vgrd_pres, tmp_pres, hgt_pres and spfh_pres (for GFS version 2, check out this Table 1, for GFS version 12 have a look at the Description_of_reforecast_data.pdf) level can be given in advance to download specific levels only. Level specification in millibars or hecto pascal. An example:

• GFSV2_get -v 12 -p tmp_pres -l 500 -d 2014-03-10

NOTE: The download will be skipped if the output grib file already exists! This can be crucial if you download a data set, re-specify the settings and try to run the script again. As the file already exists (even if containing different subset of data) the data won't be downloaded again. In this case simply delete the local grib files in data/YYYY/mm and re-run the job.

GFSV2_bulk executable

This is the bulk download version of the GFSV2_get executable explained above. Rather than providing a set of input arguments only one argument is allowed and required: -c/--config. -c/--config is the path to a config file. All specifications can be set in this config file. The config file allows to specify:

• Version.
• Specific ouptut path/file name.
• Date range for which data should be downloaded (from to).
• Additional only flag (download data for date range if and only if the date is in month only) .
• The steps to download.
• A spatial subset (required wgrib2 installed). Data will be subsetted after downloading with respect to the specification (lonmin, lonmax, latmin and latmax).
• Parameters which have to be downloaded (each one can have it's own level/members specification).

The package contains a default.config file which can be used as a starting point to write your own custom config file to be used alongside with GFSV2_bulk. Simply call:

• GFSV2_defaultconfig > my_config_file.conf

... to get the template and adjust it according to your needs. Once finished, call:

• GFSV2_bulk --config your_config_file.conf

... to start downloading the data.