Describe the Enhancement

When working on the python embedding of point observations in Point-Stat with @j-opatz, we ran into an issue. When Point-Stat was configured to verify against observation variables named wind_spd we got this runtime error:

ERROR  : VarInfoGrib::add_grib_code() -> unrecognized GRIB1 field abbreviation 'wind_spd' for table version (-9999), center (-9999), and subcenter (-9999) or default table version (2), center (7), and subcenter (1).

This issue is to fix Point-Stat to make this work. Note that the same issue likely exists in Ensemble-Stat.

Here's why we get this error:

• This line of code checks the first input point observation file to see if it specifies observations by variable name or GRIB code. Earlier versions of MET did latter while newer versions do the former.
• The default value is use_var_id = FALSE (i.e. meaning point obs are specified by GRIB codes).
• With python inputs (as in this case), it obviously can't open/read it as a NetCDF file, so it uses the default value of FALSE.
• This line of code tries to interpret the obs variable string from the config file as being a GRIB code abbreviation. If the obs data is specified as GRIB codes, the code needs to figure out which GRIB code to use! And that triggers the runtime error listed above.

So I understand why this is happening, and there's some options for how we could fix it.

Recommend moving the logic for calling add_grib_code() further down. Instead of calling it once at the beginning based on the setting of the first point observation file, do it inside the obs file processing loop. Only call add_grib_code() when actually needed based on the actual obs data read from the NetCDF file (or python script in this case).

Time Estimate

1 day.

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