INTRODUCTION

I believe the most significant contribution of GrADS to the data "slicing" problem is its support of a universal, EXTERNAL-TO-THE-DATA "world coordinate."

There are three coordinate systems in GrADS:

• GRID or index coorindate where data are reference by indices
• WORLD or some external physical coordinate
• PLOT or x-y location on the screen
We'll first concentrate on the data cooridinates GRID and WORLD before discussing PLOT coordinates since these are the most important for data display and analysis.

The world coordinate is 4-D and is DEFINED INSIDE GrADS as the variables or dimensions with the names lon, lat, lev and time. The typical correspondence between these GrADS world coordinates and the "real world" is:

lon = longitude on the earth in degrees east
lat = latitude on the earth in degrees N
lev = pressure levels, sigma levels or theta levels
time = REAL TIME in min, hours, days, months and years (Gregorian calendar)

For example, the point in the physical world (NOT DATA) of (14.3N; 145E; 500 mb; 00:12 UTC on 7 March 1996 (a point above Guam)) in GrADS world coordinates (lon;lat;lev;time) would be (14.3;145.0;500;12:00Z7Mar1996).

The grid coordinate is also 4-D and is DEFINED INSIDE GrADS as (x,y,z,t). In FORTRAN, the data would written out

parameter (nx=144,ny=73,nz=17,nt=2)
dimension u(nx,ny,nz,nt)
integer x,y,z,t

do t=1,nt    do z=1,nz
     write(10) ((u(x,y),x=1,nx),y=1,ny)
   end do
end do

In GrADS, one can REFERENCE data in the GrADS world coordinate IRRESPECTIVE of the underlying data structure. This feature is something that the netCDF data access procedures do NOT support and is what makes GrADS a powerful data slicer.

However, as in the real world, GrADS only supports ONE relationship or "map" between world and grid coordinates at a time. This map is based on the "default" file which by default is the first file opened. To understand where this world->grid and grid->world map comes from consider the following data descriptor or .ctl file:

dset ^bm.dat
title the best model ver data
options yrev zrev
xdef 72 linear 0.0 5.0
ydef 46 linear -90 4.0
zdef 3 levels 850 500 200
tdef 1 linear 00z1jan1996 12hr
vars 1
  z 3 0 geopotential height endvars
the map is defined by the x(y,z,t)def cards and (optionally) the options card. In GrADS the world coordinate is ALWAYS defined such that longitude (lon) increases from West to East, latitutde (lat) increases toward the North and pressure level (lev) DECREASES with height (this is not strictly true but is very important when doing calculations such as vint). Time is a special case and can ONLY be linear with equal spacing (12hr in the example). While the ?def "cards" can be ordered in any way in the .ctl file, the world coordinate inside GrADS is ALWAYS (lon,lat,lev,time). However, this does NOT mean the DATA has be arranged this way and the "options" card tells GrADS how the data differs from the standard. In the above example case, the latitudes in GRID cooridates DECREASES with INCREASING y, that is y=1 -> lat=90; y=2 -> lat=86; y=45 -> lat=-90 (some models and graphics systems prefer this orientation). Similarly, lev=200 is stored first, followed by lev=500 and lev=200. Other modifications to the world<->grid map are possible, as described below.

DISPLAYING DATA RELATIVE TO THE WORLD COORDINATE

The first task in intercomparing two or more data sets with different grids (i.e., different grid and world coordinates or grid-world "maps") is the graphical overlay or plotting two fields on top of each other. One specifies a 0-3 dimensional volume in either grid or world coordinates and then display a variable. Consider the typical case of a 2-D contour plot:
open psl.ecmwf.ctl
open psl.ncep.ctl
set gxout contour
set t 1
set lon 0 180
set lat 0 90
d psl

and let's see what is happening inside GrADS.

the "default" file is the first one or the data in psl.ecmwf.ctl. This specifes that the grid-world and world-grid map will be based on the psl.ecmwf.ctl.

set t 1 - look at the first time in the file or 'set time 00z1mar96' if that were the actual time corresponding the