Describe the Problem

This issue was reported by the UK MetOffice via met-help:
https://rt.rap.ucar.edu/rt/Ticket/Display.html?id=99819

The following call to Point-Stat errors out:

point_stat prods_op_gl-mn_20210302_00_012.nc lndsyn_2021030212.nc PointStatConfig
DEBUG 1: Forecast File: prods_op_gl-mn_20210302_00_012.nc
DEBUG 1: Observation File: lndsyn_2021030212.nc
WARNING: MetNcCFDataFile::collect_time_offsets(VarInfo &) -> Not found time out of 1.
ERROR  : 
ERROR  : MetNcCFDataFile::collect_time_offsets(VarInfo &) -> variable "air_temperature" has unknown error (999).
ERROR  :

However the plot_data_plane tool is able to plot this data without error and it does parse the timestamp correctly:

plot_data_plane prods_op_gl-mn_20210302_00_012.nc prods_op_gl-mn_20210302_00_012.ps 'name="air_temperature"; level="(*,*)";' -v 4
DEBUG 4:      valid time: 20210302_120000

Expected Behavior

plot_data_plane's call to the MetNcCFDataFile::data_plane() function in data2d_nccf.cc is able handle the way this timing information is stored in this NetCDF file. However, point_stat's call to MetNcCFDataFile::data_plane_array() results in this error message. The task for this issue is to port over logic from data_plane() to data_plane_array() to enable it to process the single timestep in this file without error.

Environment

Describe your runtime environment:
1. Machine: Mac Laptop
2. OS: MacOS
3. Software version number(s): replicated with met-9.1 and met-10.0.0-beta5. Please fix this for MET version 10.0.0.

To Reproduce

Describe the steps to reproduce the behavior:
1. Download these files:
prods_op_gl-mn_20210302_00_012.nc.txt
lndsyn_2021030212.nc.txt
PointStatConfig.txt
2. Rename them to strip off the .txt suffix

mv prods_op_gl-mn_20210302_00_012.nc.txt prods_op_gl-mn_20210302_00_012.nc
mv lndsyn_2021030212.nc.txt lndsyn_2021030212.nc
mv PointStatConfig.txt PointStatConfig

3. Run Point-Stat from MET's develop branch:

point_stat  prods_op_gl-mn_20210302_00_012.nc lndsyn_2021030212.nc PointStatConfig

4. See error

WARNING: MetNcCFDataFile::collect_time_offsets(VarInfo &) -> Not found time out of 1.
ERROR  : 
ERROR  : MetNcCFDataFile::collect_time_offsets(VarInfo &) -> variable "air_temperature" has unknown error (999).
ERROR  : 

5. Compare to the processing logic of plot_data_plane:

plot_data_plane prods_op_gl-mn_20210302_00_012.nc prods_op_gl-mn_20210302_00_012.ps 'name="air_temperature"; level="(*,*)";' -v 4

Relevant Deadlines

ASAP, for inclusion in met-10.0.0.

Funding Source

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Assignee

• Select engineer(s) or no engineer required: Howard Soh
• Select scientist(s) or no scientist required: John Opatz

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• METplus, MET, METdatadb, METviewer, METexpress, METcalcpy, METplotpy
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