Planeflight diagnostic

On this page we provide information about the GEOS-Chem planeflight diagnostic, which allows you to save certain diagnostic quantities along flight tracks or at the position of ground observations. This can be more efficient in terms of storage than saving out 3-D data files via the GEOS-Chem History diagnostics.

Important

Several diagnostic quantities were disabled when the SMVGEAR chemistry solver was replaced with the FlexChem implementation of KPP (cf: Update chemical mechanisms with KPP). Therefore, you may find that functionality is not currently working. We look to GEOS-Chem community members to help us maintain the planeflight diagnostic.

The Planeflight.dat.YYYYMMDD configuration file

The Planeflight.dat.YYYYMMDD files allow you to specify the diagnostic quantities (species, reaction rates, met fields) that you want to print out for a specific longitude, latitude, altitude, and time. A sample Planeflight.dat.YYYYMMDD file is given below. Of course if you have lots of flight track data points, your file will be much longer.

If the plane flight following diagnostic is switched on, then it will look for a new Planeflight.dat.YYYYMMDD file each day. If a Planeflight.dat.YYYYMMDD file is found for a given day, then GEOS-Chem will save out diagnostic quantities along the flight track(s) to the plane.log.YYYYMMDD file.

Format

Planeflight.dat -- Input file for planeflight diagnostic
GCST
July 2018
-----------------------------------------------------------
9     <-- # of variables to be output (listed below)
-----------------------------------------------------------
TRA_001
TRA_002
TRA_003
GMAO_TEMP
GMAO_ABSH
GMAO_RELH
GMAO_IIEV
GMAO_JJEV
GMAO_LLEV
-----------------------------------------------------------
  Now give the times and locations of the flight
-----------------------------------------------------------
Point   Type DD-MM-YYYY HH:MM     LAT     LON ALT/PRE        OBS
    1   Scrz 30-06-2012 13:53  -46.43   51.85  202.00   1765.030
    2   Scrz 30-06-2012 13:53  -46.43   51.85  202.00   1765.060
    3   Sush 30-06-2012 16:25  -54.85  -68.31   32.00   1764.750
    4   Sush 30-06-2012 16:25  -54.85  -68.31   32.00   1765.610
    5   Sllb 30-06-2012 17:13   54.95 -112.45  588.00   1891.200
    6   Sllb 30-06-2012 17:13   54.95 -112.45  588.00   1891.310
99999   END  00-00-0000 00:00    0.00    0.00    0.00      0.000

The data in this text file can be read and plotted using GAMAP routines CTM_READPLANEFLIGHT and PLANE_PLOT.

Requesting diagnostic quantities

The first part of the Planeflight.dat.YYYYMMDD file allows you to request several diagnostic quantities that you would like to be archived along the plane’s flight track. These are listed in the table below.

You must make sure that you have specified the number of requested quantities properly, or you will get an input error.

Important

Several planeflight diagnostic quantities had to be disabled when the SMVGEAR chemical solver was replaced by the FlexChem implementation of the KPP chemical solver. Therefore, you may find that not all of the planeflight diagnostic quantities listed below are still functional. Please report any issues to the GEOS-Chem Support Team by opening a new Github issue.

Planeflight diagnostic archivable quantities

Quantity	Description	Units
TRA_nnn	Species concentration (nnn = species index)	v/v dry
OH, HO2, etc.	Species concentration	molec/cm3
RO2	Concentration of RO2 family	v/v dry
AN	Concentration of AN family	v/v dry
NOy	Concentration of NOy family	v/v dry
GMAO_TEMP	Temperature	K
GMAO_ABSH	Absolute humidity	unitless
GMAO_SURF	Aerosol surface area	cm2/cm3
GMAO_PSFC	Surface pressure	hPa
GMAO_UWND	Zonal winds	m/s
GMAO_VWND	Meridional winds	m/s
GMAO_IIEV	Longitude index	unitless
GMAO_JJEV	Latitude index	unitless
GMAO_LLEV	Level index	unitless
GMAO_RELH	Relative humidity	%
GMAO_PSLV	Sea level pressure	hPa
GMAO_AVGW	Water vapor mixing ratio	v/v
GMAO_THTA	Potential temperature	K
GMAO_PRES	Pressure at center of grid box	hPa
GMAO_ICEnn	SEAICEnn fields	unitless
AODC_SULF	Column AOD, sulfate	unitless
AODC_BLKC	Column AOD, black carbon	unitless
AODC_ORGC	Column AOD, organic carbon	unitless
AODC_SALA	Column AOD, fine sea salt	unitless
AODC_SALC	Column AOD, coarse sea salt	unitless
AODC_DUST	Column AOD, dust	unitless
AODB_SULF	Column AOD, sulfate (below aircraft)	unitless
AODB_BLKC	Column AOD, black carbon (below aircraft)	unitless
AODB_ORGC	Column AOD, organic carbon (below aircraft)	unitless
AODB_SALA	Column AOD, fine sea salt (below aircraft)	unitless
AODB_SALC	Column AOD, coarse sea salt (below aircraft)	unitless
AODB_DUST	Column AOD, dust (below the aircraft)	unitless
TMS_nnn	Nucleation rates (TOMAS)
HG2_FRACG	Frac of Hg(II) in gas phase	unitless
HG2_FRACP	Frac Hg(II) in particle phase	unitless
ISOR_HPLUS	ISORROPIA H+	M
ISOR_PH	ISORROPIA pH	unitless
ISOR_AH2O	ISORROPIA aerosol water	ug/m3 air
ISOR_HSO4	ISORROPIA bifulfate	M
TIME_LT	Local time	hours
AQAER_RAD	Aqueous aerosol radius	cm
AQAER_SURF	Aqueous aerosol surface area	cm2/cm3
PROD_xxxx	Production rates (needs updating)	molec/cm3/s
REA_nnn	Reaction rates (Needs updating)	molec/cm3/s

Specifying the flight track

The next section of the Planeflight.dat.YYYYMMDD file is where you will specify the points that make up the flight track.

Quantity	Description
POINT	A sequential index of flight track points.
TYPE	Identifier for the plane (or station)
DD	Day of the observation
MM	Month of the observation
YYYY	Year of the observation
HH	Hour of the observation (UTC)
MM	Minute of the observation (UTC)
LAT	Latitude (deg), range -90 to +90
LON	Longitude (deg), range -180 to +180
ALT/PRE	Altitude [m] or Pressure [hPa] of the observation [1]
OBS	Value of the observation (if known), used to compare to model output

Notes

[1]

Altitude is only supported for CCGG or tower data. All other observations must specify pressure in hPa. This can be obtained from the “static pressure” field as measured by the aircraft. See this code block in planeflight_mod.F90 for details.

Important

The TYPE column can be used to specify the aircraft type and flight number to distinguish between multiple plane flight tracks.

The planeflight diagnostic will automatically set L=1 if it does not recognize TYPE. When using a new flight track, make sure to add your TYPE to this IF statement if you do not wish to use L=1 for that type value.

The plane.log.YYYYMMDD output file

The plane.log.YYYYMMDD file contains output from the planeflight diagnostic.

Format

POINT    TYPE YYYYMMDD HHMM     LAT     LON   PRESS        OBS     T-IND P-I I-IND J-IND  TRA_001     GMAO_TEMP   ...
    1    Scrz 20120630 1353  -46.43   51.85  981.74   1765.030 000061277 002 00047 00012  1.785E-006  2.780E+002  ...
    2    Scrz 20120630 1353  -46.43   51.85  981.74   1765.060 000061277 002 00047 00012  1.785E-006  2.780E+002  ...
    3    Sush 20120630 1625  -54.85  -68.31  949.77   1764.750 000061281 002 00023 00010  1.784E-006  2.746E+002  ...
    4    Sush 20120630 1625  -54.85  -68.31  949.77   1765.610 000061281 002 00023 00010  1.784E-006  2.746E+002  ...
    5    Sllb 20120630 1713   54.95 -112.45  876.13   1891.200 000061283 005 00015 00037  1.906E-006  2.942E+002  ...
    6    Sllb 20120630 1713   54.95 -112.45  876.13   1891.310 000061283 005 00015 00037  1.906E-006  2.942E+002  ...

Columns

Cp;

Column	Description
POINT	Flight track data point number (for reference)
TYPE	Aircraft/flight number ID or ground station ID
YYYYMMDD	Year, month, and day (UTC or each flight track point
HHMM	Hour and minute (UTC) for each flight track point
LAT	Latitude (-90 to 90 degrees) for each flight track point
LON	Longitude (-180 to 180 degrees) for each flight track point
PRESS	Pressure in hPa for each flight track point
OBS	Observation value from the flight campaign
T-IND	Time index
P-IND	GEOS-Chem level index
I-IND	GEOS-Chem longitude index
J-IND	GEOS-Chem latitude index
TRA_001 etc.	Diagnostic quantities requested in Planeflight.dat.YYMMDD