Hourly trajectory with 3-hour resolution GDAS

[maffe89]

Hi all,

does it make sense to calculate a trajectory every hour if the GDAS data have a temporal resolution of 3 hours ?

cheers,
maffe.

[barbara.stunder]

This question relates to the accuracy of the meteorology data and hence accuracy of trajectory. When a trajectory is calculated from one grid point at the time of the meteorology, and you are calculating the trajectory until the next meteorological time period, do you know the actual wind at every time (i.e. hour, minute, second, etc.) along the trajectory? No. Should you use only the 1st time period, only the 2nd time period, or some sort of temporal interpolation? Should you use wind only at the nearest grid point or do a spatial interpolation? The interpolation used in HYSPLIT provides an estimate. This is described some in the Trajectory Calculations section of the tutorial - https://ready.arl.noaa.gov/HYSPLIT_Tutorials.php