Post by Sara Ganetis on Aug 30, 2013 19:25:16 GMT
Hey guys-- Do you ever spend a good five+ minutes on a calculation only to arrive at a number that seems totally unphysical and bogus but you're not really sure if it is? All you TA's out there have probably had a good chuckle while grading assignments or quizzes that claim that the calculated airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow was -12489 m/s, for example. Ain't no bird going that fast even if it was traveling with the mean flow!
Do you have any online sites or lecture notes where there are "sanity check" ranges for a given atmospheric variable? Or if you have been in the field awhile and know them right off the top of your head I'll add them to this post. The goal of this is that it can serve as a quick reference before handing in an assignment or (gasp) submitting a paper!
Here's some that were retrieved by looking at the GEMPAK "pack" files that are used as threshold checks when ingesting data (special thanks to Alan Srock for pointing this out). If you have GEMPAK installed, cd $GEMPAK/tables/pack and look at sfsyn.pack, metar.pack, and acars.pack. Some examples are given below!
Do you have any online sites or lecture notes where there are "sanity check" ranges for a given atmospheric variable? Or if you have been in the field awhile and know them right off the top of your head I'll add them to this post. The goal of this is that it can serve as a quick reference before handing in an assignment or (gasp) submitting a paper!
Here's some that were retrieved by looking at the GEMPAK "pack" files that are used as threshold checks when ingesting data (special thanks to Alan Srock for pointing this out). If you have GEMPAK installed, cd $GEMPAK/tables/pack and look at sfsyn.pack, metar.pack, and acars.pack. Some examples are given below!
| Variable | Realistic Range of Values | Source | Extra Notes |
| SLP | 1100 to 900 | GEMPAK sfsyn.pack | |
| Surface Temperature (C) | -60 to 60 | GEMPAK sfsyn.pack | |
| Surface Dew Point (C) | -60 to 60 | GEMPAK sfsyn.pack | |
| 10-m Wind Speed | 0 to 100 kts (51.44 m/s) | GEMPAK sfsyn.pack |