PB2NC Functionality
The PB2NC tool is used to stratify the contents of an input PrepBufr point observation file and reformat it into NetCDF format for use by the Point-Stat tool. The PB2NC tool must be run on the input PrepBufr point observation file prior to running Point-Stat.
Fortran-Blocking
Please note that in earlier versions of the PB2NC tool, users were typically required to run their PrepBufr files through the cwordsh utility to perform Fortran-blocking prior to running them through PB2NC. This blocking step is now done internally and is set when configuring MET. The --disable-block4 MET compilation option indicates that 4-byte blocking should be performed instead of the default 8-byte blocking. If you experience runtime errors from the PB2NC tool try adding or removing the --disable-block4 flag, recompiling, and rerunning.
PB2NC Usage
View the usage statement for PB2NC by simply typing the following:
At a minimum, the input prepbufr_file, the output netcdf_file, and the configuration config_file must be passed in on the command line. You may use the -pbfile command line argument to run PB2NC using multiple input PrepBufr files, typically adjacent in time.
