THE NCEP ETA MODEL HORIZONTAL OUTPUT GRID FOR GCIP/GIST

     The chosen GCIP/GIST horizontal output grid from the 
     mesoscale NCEP Eta Model is NCEP Grid No. 212, known as 
     AWIPS Grid 212.  This grid is defined on a Lambert 
     Conformal projection with a nominal horizontal grid 
     resolution of 40-km and grid dimensions of 185 x 129. 
     The latitude/longitude locations of the corner points 
     of this grid are given below:

         ( I , J )           Latitude / Longitude

         ( 1 , 1 )           12.190 N / 133.459 W
         ( 1 ,129)           54.536 N / 152.856 W
         (185,129)           57.290 N /  49.385 W
         (185, 1 )           14.335 N /  65.091 W

     The above domain covers most of N. America and the nearby 
     oceans, including the 48 contiguous U.S. states, the southern 
     half of Canada, and most of Mexico.

     The latitude and longitude values for the entire 185 x 129 
     grid have been provided in two companion files; one file
     written as a packed binary file and one file written as
     a formatted ascii file.  These files are decribed below:

     File lalog212.fmt :
     
     Written as ascii formatted records (total records = 23865,
     i.e. 185 x 129).  Each record contains the following 
     information:  I index value, J index value, latitude(I,J) (+N), 
     longitude(I,J) (deg E), written with this FORMAT statement:
      
                          (2I4,1X,F12.5,1X,F12.5)
     

     File lalog212.grb :
     
     Written as an unblocked packed binary file using the
     WMO international "GRIB" packing convention.  Two arrays 
     written: 
              1) the latitudes  of the 185 x 129 grid (+N) and 
              2) the longitudes of the 185 x 129 grid (deg E)  
     
     For documentation and unpacking software for the GRIB
     packing convention, see Sec. IV.b of the NCEP On-line
     GCIP documentation file called "gcip.doc" in directory 
     /pub/mso on the anonymous NCEP Internet Server 140.90.50.22 
     (use ID: anonymous, Password: your Internet e-mail address)

     A user can check his or her GRIB unpacking software by
     unpacking file lalog212.grb and comparing the values with
     the values is the preceding ascii file lalog212.fmt

             ******      IMPORTANT NOTE     ******

     The NCEP on-line file "gcip.doc" provides a comprehensive 
     description of all the NCEP Eta Model output fields and data 
     formally provided for GCIP.  See above paragraph for 
     Internet access instructions.