Table of Contents - The Atmospheric Studies Group at TRC

Section 9: CALPUFF
9.15 CALPUFF Output Files
9.15.1 List File (CALPUFF.LST)
The general list file for your CALPUFF run, CALPUFF.LST, is an ASCII text file that may be viewed by
any standard text editor, or printed to any standard printer. It provides the primary means of documenting
the CALPUFF application, and it also contains all warning messages that may have been generated by the
application. Note that some problems detected by CALPUFF result in fatal error messages (the requested
modeling period is not simulated), while other problems are not severe enough to halt the run, and
warning messages are written to the list file. Warning messages may be located throughout the file,
whereas fatal error messages are at the end (because the run is halted). Therefore, the list file should
always be reviewed.
The contents of the control file are echoed to the first part of the list file, and header records from each
external data file for the run follow. In the case of CALMET.DAT, the header records include all of the
time-invariant data fields, so that the file can become quite large when large CALMET grids are used.
The remainder of the list file contains any hourly concentrations and deposition fluxes that are selected
for output to the “printer”. This selection is made in Input Group 5 (see Section 9.1) where ICPRT,
IDPRT, and IWPRT identify the types of data selected; ICFRQ, IDFRQ, and IWFRQ identify the interval
(in hours) between the data written to the list file; and IPRTU identifies the units used for this output.
The species written are also explicitly selected here. Because the primary data files produced by
CALPUFF are CONC.DAT, DFLX.DAT. and WFLX.DAT, which are processed by CALPOST, any data
sent to the list file are generally for making spot-checks prior to the post-processing step, or for viewing
the results of very short runs.
The debug option, controlled by LDEBUG, IPFDEB, NPFDEB, NN1, and NN2 in Input Group 5, also
places a good deal of information in the list file. Much of this uses internal parameter names, and is most
useful for those who are tracing the treatment of a few specific puffs through the many CALPUFF
subroutines, or for those who are preparing a run and want to obtain more information during the setup
phase (use ITEST=1 in Input Group 1 to stop the run before going into the computational phase). If many
puffs are traced (NPFDEB) over many modeling periods (NN1 to NN2), the list file will become huge. A
limited set of puff information is also written to DEBUG.DAT each sampling step when the debug option
is selected. This file is described in Section 9.15.7.
9.15.2 Restart File (RESTARTE.DAT)
Information for all puffs that are still within the computational grid at the end of a CALPUFF run can be
saved to disk in RESTARTE.DAT to initialize a continuation run. This allows CALPUFF to properly
account for “old” material within the modeling domain at the start of the continuation run. This restart
file may also be refreshed periodically during a run, as configured by NRESPD in Input Group 1 of the
control file (see Section 9.1). RESTARTE.DAT is an unformatted data file that contains information
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