HYSPLIT Forum: hysplitbbs.arl.noaa.gov

Hello,

I used HYSPLIT Ver 5.0.0 to look at a radioactive release from a nuclear power plant. The model run time was 12 hours with 3 hour intervals. This meant that 4 postscript frames were generated. The postscript frame showed 4 different radioactivity concentration levels. I then converted one of the postscript frames to a shape file. When I opened the shape file using ArcGIS, the contours were displayed OK. However, the values of the contours in ArcGIS (data attributes) did not correspond to the values of the contours shown in the postscript frame. Why is this happening? I would like to see the concentration values in the shape file data attributes but the conversion program did not seem to do this.

Regards,
Robert Ryan

What program did you use to create a shapefile from a postscript frame?

The contour plot in ArcGIS seems missing parts of two contours for 1000 uBg/m3 and 100 uBq/m3 approximately at latitude >= 62.2 degrees. They simply look like cut out. Is this the difference that you noticed?

Hi there,

Thanks for the reply. I used the option in the Concentrations - Display GUI. I selected 'ESRI Generate'. This creates a *.txt and *.att for each postscript file. Then I selected Concentration - Utilities - GIS to Shapefile to select the *.txt and *.att files to create the shapefiles (*.shp, *.shx, *.dbf, *.prj). So, it was an internal HYSPLIT operation that created the shapefile. Unfortunately, the attribute data in the shapefile does not contain the same information that is displayed in the postscript file.

Regards,
Robert

As for the cut-off appearance, I'm not sure what is happening there. I think that could be a separate problem...

Thanks for the update. I would like to reproduce the issue for debugging purposes. Could you share the CONTROL and SETUP files you used for your HYSPLIT simulation that exhibited the contour issue? The files may be copied as CONTROL.txt and SETUP.txt. The renamed files may be attached to another post on this thread.