Point-Stat Tool: General
Point-Stat Functionality
The Point-Stat tool provides verification statistics for comparing gridded forecasts to observation points, as opposed to gridded analyses like Grid-Stat. The Point-Stat tool matches gridded forecasts to point observation locations using one or more configurable interpolation methods. The tool then computes a configurable set of verification statistics for these matched pairs. Continuous statistics are computed over the raw matched pair values. Categorical statistics are generally calculated by applying a threshold to the forecast and observation values. Confidence intervals, which represent a measure of uncertainty, are computed for all of the verification statistics.
Point-Stat Usage
View the usage statement for Point-Stat by simply typing the following:
| Usage: point_stat | ||
| fcst_file | Input gridded file path/name | |
| obs_file | Input NetCDF observation file path/name | |
| config_file | Configuration file | |
| [-point_obs file] | Additional NetCDF observation files to be used (optional) | |
| [-obs_valid_beg time] | Sets the beginning of the matching time window in YYYYMMDD[_HH[MMSS]] format (optional) | |
| [-obs_valid_end time] | Sets the end of the matching time window in YYYYMMDD[_HH[MMSS]] format (optional) | |
| [-outdir path] | Overrides the default output directory (optional) | |
| [-log file] | Outputs log messages to the specified file (optional) | |
| [-v level] | Level of logging (optional) |
At a minimum, the input gridded fcst_file, the input NetCDF obs_file (output of PB2NC, ASCII2NC, MADIS2NC, and LIDAR2NC, last two not covered in these exercises), and the configuration config_file must be passed in on the command line. You may use the -point_obs command line argument to specify additional NetCDF observation files to be used.
