Is there a way this can be done?

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quaymat321234
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Is there a way this can be done?

Post by quaymat321234 »

I am inputting GIS shapefiles into ARCGIS but would like each point to retain certain information such as the time stamp and altitude. How to keep altitude data in GIS shapefiles?
MarkCohen
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Joined: August 5th, 2016, 11:56 am
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Re: Is there a way this can be done?

Post by MarkCohen »

Hi Quaymat321234, I will try to take a look at this as soon as I can, but it will probably be a few days. Thanks for your question and your patience : )
yaqiang
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Re: Is there a way this can be done?

Post by yaqiang »

You can create point shape file from HYSPLIT trajectory data file using MeteoInfo. All variable values will be added in attribute table including time stamp and altitude.
ariel.stein
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Joined: November 7th, 2012, 3:14 pm
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Re: Is there a way this can be done?

Post by ariel.stein »

Hi, this is definitely possible in the HYSPLIT GUI. As an example, here are the steps to display trajectory endpoints.
(1) Run a trajectory in the usual way in the GUI.
1a: if you want to be able to bring in any meteorological variables, you will have to add them in the Advanced > Configuration Setup > Trajectory menu
1b: otherwise, all you will have available is height and pressure
1c: also, if you want to change the height units from the default (meters above ground level), you can do this also in the Advanced menus
1d: Basically, you have to make sure that you are getting the type of output that you will want later for your shapefile
(2) Trajectory > Display > Trajectory:
2a: select radio button for GIS-point
2b: select the vertical coordinate you want; this is the coordinate that you will get in your shapefile later
2c: If you want to have a met variable in your shapefile, you can pick this as your "vertical coordinate"
2b: Execute Display
2c: you will see two files in your working directory: GIS_traj_ps_01.txt, and, GIS_traj_ps_01.att (this att file has the attributes that you want)
(3) Trajectory > Utilities > GIS to Shapefile
3a: select name of input generate text file (typically is GIS_traj_ps_01.txt, unless you renamed it)
3b: Conversion method: points
3c: Enhanced attributes (dbf): Trajectory
3d: specify an output shapefile base name or use the default
3e: Process Data
(4) You should now see four new files in your working directory, each with the shapefile base name you provided in 3d above, and with extensions "dbf", "prj", "shp", and "shx" (the dbf file has the enhanced attributes, like elevation and time)
(5) Add the shapefile to your GIS
5a: if you Open Attribute Table, you will see that each point has a date, time, and a "LEVEL" column. The meaning of the "LEVEL" column is set by what you did in 2b/2c above.

I did this in ArcMap and it seems to work very well.

From Mark Cohen
MarkCohen
Posts: 19
Joined: August 5th, 2016, 11:56 am
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Re: Is there a way this can be done?

Post by MarkCohen »

Hi, one more aspect of this to mention.

Note, there is another way to do this, "outside" of the GUI.

Basically, you can take any tdump file and edit it to create a simple text file that you can import into your GIS program.

Here is what I have done in ArcGIS / ArcMap.

There are probably a number of formats that will work, but I usually pick something like this:
First line is field names, separated by commas, e.g., ptnum,date,time,lat,long,elev, ...
And then one line for comma-delimited values for each point. Each point is one record (one line).
GIS programs are getting better and better and you can probably have different formats from the above...
The way I do it goes back to the old days when things were not so flexible! Also, be careful
on the first line with field names, at least in the past, there have been restrictions on length
(<8 or <10 characters) and restrictions on certain special characters.

In any event, once you have this simple text file, import it into GIS.
Open it to make sure it came in as you hoped. If something is messed up, you can generally see it right away.
Then "display x-y data", picking long for x and lat for y
Then "Data > Export Data" to a shapefile
When you do this, you create a shapefile with all of the info you had in your text file
In this way, you can get more fields all at once into your GIS, and not just one vertical coordinate (or met variable) at a time.
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