SPARC Reanalysis Intercomparison Project

Various S-RIP Related Datasets

  • The S-RIP zonal-mean dynamical variables data sets prepared by Patrick Martineau: Extended version since June 2022: An extended version "RID" is now available at the official RID website at JAMSTEC. The previous version (by Martineau et al., ESSD, 2018) is still available from here.
  • The S-RIP zonal-mean heating rates datasets prepared by Jonathon Wright [See also Martineau, Wright et al., ESSD, 2018]
  • The S-RIP common grid files prepared by Sean Davis (bottom of this page) [As of June 2020, they are also archived at a zenodo site (doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3754753).]
  • CFSR/CFSv2 model level data set (1979-2015; to be extended): NOAA ftp site (contact Sean Davis for access information; see Butler et al. (2017 AMS Mid. Atmos. Conf., poster pdf) for overview of this data set.)
  • Supplementary data files for Fujiwara et al., ACP, 2017 (i.e., information on production stream transitions, vertical grids, selected boundary conditions, timelines of assimilated data, and SSU and AMSU-A weighting functions) [Some corrections have been made in Feb. 2018 and in Feb. 2019; see the Corrigendum at the ACP site for the details]
  • See below for the S-RIP community data archive at CEDA.

S-RIP Community Data Archive

The Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA), UK has agreed to provide S-RIP with a virtual machine for data processing and a group workspace for storing data.

The information on this page was last updated on 27 December 2018.

New information (4 July 2018) on JASMIN "high-performance" data transfer can be found here and here.

General Information

General information regarding the JASMIN facility can be found at

How to Access JASMIN

The instructions for JASMIN access are posted at this link.

What You Can Do With JASMIN

Once you are logged into jasmin-login1, you can connect to jasmin-sci1 and then go to the S-RIP group workspace:
ssh -X jasmin-sci1
cd /gws/nopw/j04/srip

jasmin-sci1 is the virtual machine that is available for analyzing data. The list of packages installed on jasmin-sci1 is available at this link, and includes ipython, nco, and cdo. IDL is not available by default, but can be added by typing
module add idl
at the jasmin-sci1 prompt. Matlab is not available and CEDA have no plans to install it, but octave (Matlab's open source clone) is available for running Matlab scripts.

Data can be uploaded to the JASMIN by using rsync as
rsync -tpu filename username@jasmin-xfer1.ceda.ac.uk:/gws/nopw/j04/srip/.../

Data can be downloaded from the JASMIN by using rsync as
rsync -tpu username@jasmin-xfer1.ceda.ac.uk:/gws/nopw/j04/srip/.../ .
(Adding the "r" flag in rsync will grab all the underlying dir structure. The options "tpu" will compare timestamps and update files as needed; this is good when the transfer dies while incomplete or when you want to verify you have the most up-to-date data.)

The S-RIP group workspace ( /gws/nopw/j04/srip ) contains 10TB (expanded to 30TB in Dec. 2015) of disk space. There is the possibility of increasing its size if necessary. Note that this group workspace is not backed up! CEDA are currently considering implementing a backup system for group workspaces. Storage in one's home directory is limited to 10GB, according to the Helpdesk. You can find out how much space is currently available in the S-RIP workspace by typing
pan_df -h /gws/nopw/j04/srip

S-RIP Common Grid Files

As of June 2020, the S-RIP common grid files are also archived at a zenodo site (doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3754753).

[Below is old information including a quick overview]

The S-RIP common grid files are being prepared by Sean Davis of NOAA and an initial draft is temporarily available at:

  • ftpshare.al.noaa.gov
  • user name: srip
  • password: Contact Sean Davis
  • Go to 'cgv2' directory (NOT 'cgv1')

(A copy is also available at the CEDA S-RIP workspace, at the following directory.)
/gws/nopw/j04/srip/ftpshare.al.noaa.gov/cgv2/

Notes about this data set (by Sean Davis):

  • Data set size: ~26 GB
  • Reanalyses included are CFSR, ERA-I, JRA-25, JRA-55, and MERRA [... and MERRA-2 has been added - see the zenodo site]
  • Variables include T (variable name ta), u (ua), v (va), O3 (tro3), WV (hus), and GPH (zg)
  • Data are based off of the ana4mips data set
  • Data are on a 2.5 deg x 2.5 deg grid
  • All values are monthly means
  • Pressure levels are (1000, 925, 850, 700, 600, 500, 400, 300, 250, 200, 150, 100, 70, 50, 30, 20, 10, 7, 5, 3, 2, 1, 0.7, 0.5, 0.3, 0.1 hPa)
  • 3 time periods are provided:
    • The "full" time period (different for each reanalysis)
    • The "S-RIP base period" (i.e., 197901-201312) [data up to 201412 also available - see the zenodo site]
    • The "climatology" period (198101-201012)
    • Both 3D (lon,lat,level) and zonal mean 2D (lat, level) files are provided
  • Both timeseries and climatology data are provided. Files with "ltm" in the name are climatologies
  • Reanalysis "Ensemble" files are located in the /ensemble directory (See note below*)
  • Data should be considered to be in “beta” form as they have not undergone extensive QC. Please report any problems to Sean Davis (see above)

*Regarding the "ensemble" data - I highly recommend using the "ensemble" files in the "ensemble" folder for climatological intercomparisons.

You can use a single file (e.g., hus_Amon_reanalysis_ENS_198101-201012.cg.ltm.nc for water vapor) that contains the climatologies for each reanalysis.

The data in these files are of dimension (lon, lat, level, "record"), where record 0 = CFSR, 1=ERA-I, 2=JRA-25, 3=JRA-55, and 4=MERRA.

There is also a corresponding "ensemble mean" file (e.g., hus_Amon_reanalysis_ENS_198101-201012.cg.ltm.ensmean.nc) that is simply the ensemble mean climatology from the 4 core reanalyses (CFSR, ERA-I, JRA-55, MERRA — EXCLUDING JRA-25).

You may use the following wget command to get all data:
wget -Nr ftp://srip:PASSWORD@ftpshare.al.noaa.gov/cgv2/*
(You need to replace "PASSWORD" with the actual password.)