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Current Limitations

The EXTPAR software is subject to several limitations:

  • The ASTER domain can only be used from 60°N to 60°S. Be aware that an additional border of several gridpoints is needed if the topographically corrected parameters are desired. If the ASTER domain is exceeded a warning message is printed and the program extpar_topo_to_buffer is aborted.

  • The ASTER data shows some deficits, which are listed below:

    • Beyond 60 degrees north and south, the ASTER raw data set features several areas where no value is available e.g., over Finland (private communication with HIRLAM).

    • Some bogus regions may appear in complex topography. One of these regions is located near Grindelwald in Switzerland.

    • The ASTER data are subject to artefacts of the satellite fly-over bands. Discontinuities can be spotted at the borders of such bands. In high latitudes these bands are better visible than in the low latitudes.

    • As the correction of these deficits are time consuming no effort has been expended to remove these.

    • The ASTER data might be subject to a shift of a half gridpoint (15 meters) in both directions.

  • There is no 3 km filtered ASTER or MERIT/REMA data set to derive the subgrid scale orography (SSO) parameters and the roughness length (z0) for ASTER.

  • The HWSD raw data is in a test phase. Furthermore a new version of Int2lm and TERRA is needed to make use of these data sets.

  • The subsoil can only be used if the HWSD data is used for the topsoil. If the FAO and the HWSD data are combined a warning message is printed and the ldeep_soil parameter is set to .FALSE..

  • The special points are only tested for the COSMO grid. Also it is not possible to use these corrections if the soil raw data set is HWSD.

  • Array-caching in the consistency_check is only supported for GCC compiler.

  • CAMS aersosl data iaot_type = 5 is only supported for Intel compiler.