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Regional Deterministic Precipitation Analysis (RDPA - CaPA)

The Regional Deterministic Precipitation Analysis (RDPA) based on the Canadian Precipitation Analysis (CaPA) system is on a domain that corresponds to that of the operational regional model, i.e. the Regional Deterministic Prediction System (RDPS-LAM3D) except for areas over the Pacific ocean where the western limit of the RDPA domain is slightly shifted eastward with respect to the regional model domain. The resolution of the RDPA analysis is identical to the resolution of the operational regional system RDPS LAM3D. The fields in the RDPA GRIB2 dataset are on a polar-stereographic (PS) grid covering North America and adjacent waters with a 10 km resolution at 60 degrees north.

Download

The data is available using the HTTP protocol and resides in a directory that is plainly accessible to a web browser. Visiting that directory with an interactive browser will yield a raw listing of links, each link being a downloadable GRIB2 file. In practice, we recommend writing your own script to automate the downloading of the desired data (using wget or equivalent). If you are unsure of how to proceed, you might like to take a look at our brief wget usage guide.

The data can be accessed at the following URLs:
http://dd.weatheroffice.gc.ca/analysis/precip/rdpa/grib2/polar_stereographic/hh

where:

File name nomenclature

The file names have the following nomenclature:

CMC_RDPA_APCP-006-0100cutoff_SFC_0_ps10km_AAAAMMJJHH_000.grib2
or
CMC_RDPA_APCP-006-0700cutoff_SFC_0_ps10km_AAAAMMJJHH_000.grib2
CMC_RDPA_APCP-024-0100cutoff_SFC_0_ps10km_YYYYMMDDHH_000.grib2
or
CMC_RDPA_APCP-024-0700cutoff_SFC_0_ps10km_YYYYMMDDHH_000.grib2

where:

Example of file name:

CMC_RDPA_APCP-006-0100cutoff_SFC_0_ps10km_2015011212_000.grib2

This file originates from the Canadian Meteorological Center (CMC) and contains data of the regional deterministic precipitation analysis (RDPA).

It contains the preliminary analysis of the accumulated precipitation represented here by APCP over a 6 (006) hour time interval starting at 2015011206 and ending at 2015011212. It is considered preliminary because the analysis has been produced using observations collected in a short 0100 hour period i.e. before all observations have been collected.

The data is on a polar-stereographic grid at 10km resolution (ps10km).

The file name contains the valid time of the analysis which in this case is 2015011212_000.

The data encoded in GRIB2 format (.grib2).

Note that a second variable is also included in this file and it is the confidence index for the analysis.

Levels

RDPA variables are only available for the surface level.

Data in GRIB2 format

About the No-data mask

Since January, 13th 2016, a mask called "No-data" has been added to our GRIB2 encoding process in order to better represent the areas where data are unavailable. This mask only concerns a few grid points with no data, always the same ones, located at the edge of the domain. Note that this mask has no negative effect on the product quality.

References

More details about this system can be found here: The Canadian Precipitation Analysis (CaPA)

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