METplus Practical Session Guide (Version 5.0) | MET Tool: Point-Stat > Run

Point-Stat Tool: Run

Next, run Point-Stat to compare a GRIB forecast to the NetCDF point observation output of the ASCII2NC tool.

Run the following command line:
point_stat \
${METPLUS_DATA}/met_test/data/sample_fcst/2007033000/nam.t00z.awip1236.tm00.20070330.grb \
../ascii2nc/tutorial_ascii.nc \
PointStatConfig_tutorial_run1 \
-outdir . \
-v 2

Point-Stat is now performing the verification tasks we requested in the configuration file. It should take less than a minute to run. You should see several status messages printed to the screen to indicate progress.

If you receive a syntax error such as the one listed below, review PointStatConfig_tutorial_run1 for an extra comma after the "}" on line number 59

        cat_thresh = [ >273.0 ];
        }, <---Remove the comma

DEBUG 1: Default Config File: /usr/local/met-9.0/share/met/config/PointStatConfig_default
DEBUG 1: User Config File: PointStatConfig_tutorial_run1
ERROR  :
ERROR  : yyerror() -> syntax error in file "/tmp/met_config_26760_0"
ERROR  :
ERROR  :    line   = 59
ERROR  :
ERROR  :    column = 0
ERROR  :
ERROR  :    text   = "]"
ERROR  :
ERROR  :
ERROR  :    ];
ERROR  : _____
ERROR  :

Now try rerunning the command listed above, but increase the verbosity level to 3 (-v 3).

Notice the more detailed information about which observations were used for each verification task. If you run Point-Stat and get fewer matched pairs than you expected, try using the -v 3 option to see why the observations were rejected.

Users often write MET-Help to ask why they got zero matched pairs from Point-Stat. The first step is always rerunning Point-Stat using verbosity level 3 or higher to list the counts of reasons for why observations were not used!