header file in ASCII

[pesei]

(from minutes of FpDev Workshop 2012)

Currently, the FLEXPART output file header is binary. An ASCII-text header file for basic parameters would be useful (maybe in addition to the current header file to preserve compatibility with existing postprocessing software); in the header file, additional information should be stored, for example path names for input data (e.g., windfields)

[sthen]

Just a few thoughts on this.

Currently the header files are used for restarts. Unless you modify the restart process as well, we will still need the current header files.

For the netcdf output version we had moved all information of the header files into the grid_*.nc file. Including these mostly as global parameters. However, I did not implement reading header information from netcdf for restarts yet.

A simple way out is to always write the binary header file if IPOUT is set. But since there were other issues with restart procedure it might be useful to do this in a more concise way that would also allow space for future modifications. For example: write the information required for restart in a separate NAMELIST file.

[pesei]

Writing out this information both in binary and in ASCII form always does not harm. The ASCII is also convenient for a quick check what was done in a specific run.

[pesei]

is implemented in v9.2beta