Precision

Except for grid values stored in IEEE format, grid values are stored with user-defined precision. By having a variable precision, the space required can be reduced. For having the temperature stored to a thousandth of a degree would be wasteful as thermometers typically give a result to a tenth of a degree.

Grid point values are stored as scaled integers, the scaling determines the precision.

val = (base+i*2^bin_scaling)*10^dec_scaling
       base = real*4
       bin_scaling = integer from -127 .. 127
       dec_scaling = integer from -127 .. 127

The -precision option prints the bin_scaling and dec_scaling values. The -precision output can be read by -set_metadata and -set_metadata_str options to set the precision.

Usage

-precision

Examples

$ wgrib2 ecmwf.tp.hc -precision
1:0:encode i*2^-4*10^0

$ wgrib2 wind.grb -precision
1:0:encode i*2^0*10^-1
2:97922:encode i*2^0*10^-1
3:179554:encode i*2^0*10^-1

See also: -packing, -scale, -set_bin_prec, -set_metadata, -set_metadata_str, -set_scale,