The first part of diag_sy_narr.exec that you'll have to edit is the 500mb plot section.

Some things to keep in mind when working on this:

-This will be the most difficult section of the 3

-You're plotting absolute vorticity (shaded), geopotential height (green contours), rising motion (red contours), and subsidence (yellow contours)

-Use the general format of the 250mb section

-Make and run averaging scripts for variables before you plot them

-Do shaded variables first, then contours/barbs

-You can look at all the variables you have by using a text editor (emacs) to look at your ctl file

-Vorticity is not a variable, you will have to compute it. I will give you a few hints. 1)Relative vorticity is the curl of the of the wind vector, which has u and v as the horizontal components. "hcurl" is a function in grads, you can look it up on the grads index webpage. You'll also have to add planetary vorticity (f). This is a function of latitude. You can plug "lat" into an equation and it will compute it for that latitude(latitude will be in DEGREES!). Math operations are straight forward. For exponentials, "x10^" is simply "e".

***Vorticity update *** - you'll want to multiply you're abs vorticity by 1e5 so that the units on the cbar are easier to view

-You don't need to rotate the winds in this section

-You can set specific shading intervals/colors by doing for example:

set clevs -2 0 2

set ccols 55 56 57 58

The ccols numbers are defined colors that are set in the beginning of the exec file. Try the different defined colors to try to get vorticity shading that is similar to what we have in the synoptic 4 panels.

***Vertical Velocity Section***

The vertical velocity section currently in your .exec file averages the vertical velocities from 700-500mb. However, When we create the 'avg' variables using our avgvariablename.gs scripts it only defines the variable for the level you currently are set to. For example, if you set the level to 500, then run a avgvvelprs.gs script, the avgvvelprs variable will only exist for the 500mb level. What we want to do is create avgvvelprs variables at the 700mb, 600mb, and 500mb levels, and then average them. To do this will require you to code the following:

-set the level to 500mb

-create and run a script called avgvvelprs500.gs

-in this script you'll need to change the variable near the top as you usually do, but also on the line that says 'define avg'v' =

change it to 'define avg'v'500 = where 500 is the level you want to average

-Repeat for 600 and 700mb

-You'll notice that we want to average the tmpprs variable at 600mb, so put your avgtmpprs.gs script in the right place

-Play around with different "set" options like cthick, cint, cmin, ccolor, clab, and others for the heights and vert vel. Look at the Synoptic 4-Panels from the pull up menu that we use to forecast, try to match colors, contour thicknesses, and contour intervals as closely as possible! Use/explore the grads index webpage!

-'set clab forced' is an option to look into if there's not enough contour labels showing up

-Try to figure as much as you can out on your own, but also feel free to work with other students when you're/they're having trouble, this is a team exercise.