CVDP | Known Issues

It is always recommended that one uses the latest version of the CVDP that is available. The most recent CVDP version (v5.2.0) works with NCL v6.2.0 and newer.

General Issues:
  • The CVDP does not work with atmospheric data that is on a spectral element or any other curvilinear grid.
  • Only certain variable names (within the input .nc files) are accepted:

TS (ts) = (/"TS","ts","sst",”t_surf”,"skt"/)
PSL (psl) = (/"PSL","psl","slp","SLP","prmsl",”msl”,”slp_dyn”/)
TREFHT (tas) = (/"TREFHT","tas","temp","air","temperature_anomaly",
                          ”temperature”,”t2m”,”t_ref”,”T2”,”tempanomaly”/)
PRECT (pr) = (/"PRECC","PRECL","PRECT","pr","PPT","ppt","p","P","precip","PRECIP",”tp”,”prcp”,”prate”/)
SNOWDP(snd) = (/"SNOWDP","snd"/)
MOC (msftmz) = (/”MOC”,”msftmyz”,"msftmz",”stfmmc”/)
aice_nh (siconc) = (/”aice_nh”,”aice”,”sic”,”SIC”,”CN”,”ice”,”icec”,"siconc"/)
aice_sh (siconc) = (/”aice_sh”,”aice”,”sic”,”SIC”,”CN”,”ice”,”icec”,"siconc"/)

If you wish to read in a different variable name you will have to alter lines 59-73, 364-366 and 607-612 of ncl_scripts/functions.ncl. (Line numbers correspond to the functions.ncl script that is distributed with CVDP v5.2.0.)

  • Input file names cannot start with the variable name followed by a period.(ex. tas.mymodel.198001-201212.nc) Use soft links or rename the files for use in the CVDP.
Version Specific Issues:
  • CVDP v5.1.0 and earlier: Due to spatial weighting being incorrectly applied, the RMS values shown in the metrics tables may be incorrect.
  • CVDP v5.0.0 and earlier: The Atlantic Nino indices are plotted incorrectly, but are correctly written to the netCDF files. The AMO and low pass AMO spatial patterns were slightly askew due to a bug in the calculation procedure where the global mean was not removed from the SST spatial anomalies prior to the spatial regression. The AMO timeseries are correct.
  • CVDP 3.7.0 and earlier: The Tropical South Atlantic timeseries is incorrectly defined as 0:20N (as opposed to 0:20S).
  • NCL v6.3.0 does not work with CVDP v3.3.1 or earlier due to continued issues with the recent behavior change in the NCL function isfilepresent. More details on this change to the isfilepresent function can be found here. A fix to the issue has been put into CVDP v3.7.0. 
  • NCL v6.2.1 does not work with CVDP v3.3.0 or earlier due to a behavior change in the NCL function isfilepresent. More details on this change to the isfilepresent function can be found here. A fix to the issue has been put into CVDP v3.3.1.
  • If netCDF4 files are to be used in the CVDP one must have NCL v6.2.0 or newer installed due to a bug in NCL v6.1.2 when reading in netCDF4 files with the NCL function addfiles.