Page Comparison

This section provides an overview of the file formats supported by Source. Table 5 lists the supported time-series data file formats. Raster data file formats are listed in Table 6. Several GIS, graphics and other formats that are also recognised by Source are listed in Table 7 but are not otherwise described in this guide. Click on the link associated with each file extension to go directly to information about that time series.

Table 5. Text-based time-series data file formats

Table 6. Text-based raster data file formats

Table 7. Other supported file formats

Anchor
Annual stochastic time series Annual stochastic time series

Annual stochastic time series

The .AR1 format contains replicates of annual time-series data generated using the AR(1) stochastic method. The file format is shown in Table 8. This format is not the same as the AR(1) format (.GEN) generated and exported by the Stochastic Climate Library.

Table 8. AR1 data file format

...

Arcinfo grid coverages can be converted to .ASC files using ESRI’s GRIDASCII command. ASC files can be imported into ArcGIS using the ASCIIGRID command.

Table 9. .ASC data file format

where:

nc is the number of columns

nr is the number of rows

xref is either XLLCENTER (centre of the grid) or XLLCORNER (lower left corner of grid)

yref is either YLLCENTER (centre of the grid) or YLLCORNER (lower left corner of grid)

(x,y) are the coordinates of the origin (by centre or lower left corner of the grid)

size is the cell side length

sentinel is a null data string (eg -9999)

value is a data point. There should be nc × nr data points.

Anchor
AWBM daily time series AWBM daily time series

AWBM daily time series

An AWBM daily time-series format file (.AWB) is an ASCII text file containing daily time-series data formatted as shown in Table 10. Dates (the year and month) were optional in the original AWBM file format, but are not optional in the format used in Source.

Table 10. AWB data file format

where:

ndays is the number of days in the month (28..31)

value is the data point corresponding with a given day in the month (ie. ndays columns)

year is the year of observation (four digits)

month is the month of observation (one or two digits).

Anchor
SWAT BSB time series SWAT BSB time series

SWAT BSB time series

A .BSB is a line-based fixed-format file, typically used by applications written in FORTRAN. The header line gives the fields for the file with subsequent lines providing data for each basin to be used for each time-step. The format is shown in Table 11. For more details refer to the SWAT manual.

Table 11. .BSB data file format

where:

id is the basin identifier (both SUB and the id are text, left-aligned)

gis is the GIS value (integer, right-aligned, eg. "1")

month is the month of observation (integer, right-aligned, eg. "0")

area is the basin area in square kilometers (real, right aligned, eg "1.14170E+02")

precip is the basin precipitation in millimetres (real, right aligned, eg "1.2000").

Anchor
BOM 6 minute time series BOM 6 minute time series

BOM 6 minute time series

A .BSM (also .PLUV) is a fixed-format file, typically supplied by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology for 6 minute pluviograph data. The file has two header lines (record types 1 and 2) followed by an arbitrary number of records of type 3. The formats of record types 1..3 are shown in Table 12, Table 13 and Table 14, respectively.

...

blank ASCII space characters

Table 13. .BSM data file format (record type 2)

where:

snum is the station number

year is the year of the observation (four digits)

month is the month of the observation (one or two digits, right-aligned, space padded)

day is the date of the observation (one or two digits, right-aligned, space padded)

rain_i is a rainfall data point as explained below.

Anchor
Comma delimited time series Comma delimited time series

Comma delimited time series

A .CDT comma delimited time-series format file is an ASCII text file that contains regular (periodic) time-series data. The file type commonly has no header line but, if required, it can support a single line header of "Date,Time series 1".

You can use the .CDT format to associate observations with a variety of time interval specifications. Table 15 shows how to structure annual data, Table 16 how to specify daily data aggregated at the monthly level, and Table 17 the more traditional daily time series (one date, one observation). Table 18 explains how to supply data in six-minute format.

Table 15. .CDT data file format (annual time series)

where:

year is the year of observation (four digits, eg. 2011)

value is the observed value (eg. 9876).

Table 16. .CDT data file format (time series with monthly data)

where:

mm is the month of observation (two digits, eg. 09)

yyyy is the year of observation (four digits, eg. 2011)

value is the observed value (eg. 2600).

Table 17. .CDT data file format (daily time series with daily data)

where:

date is the date of observation in ISO format (eg. 2000-12-31)

value is the observed value (eg. 2600).

Table 18. .CDT data file format (six-minute time series)

where:

date is the date of observation in ISO format (eg. 2000-12-31)

time is the time of observation in hours and minutes (eg 23:48)

value is the observed value (eg. 10).

Anchor
Comma-separated value Comma-separated value

Comma-separated value

A comma separated value or .CSV file is an ASCII text file that contains data in a variety of representations. When a .CSV contains regular (periodic) time-series data, there are at least two columns of data. The first contains a time-stamp and the remaining columns contain data points associated with the time-stamp. The format is shown in Table 19. All columns are separated using commas. Annual data can be entered using the notation 01/yyyy, where yyyy is a year. Header lines in .CSV files are usually optional.

Table 19. .CSV data file format

...

Tarsier modelling framework, Version 2.0.

:  Created by Fred Watson.

:  File Name : C:\data\TIME\TIMEExample.tts

:  Generated from TIME Framework

:  Date : 24/12/200411:59:30PM

:  File class: TTimeSeriesData.

FileVersion unknown

HeaderLines 1

1.

NominalNumEntries 10

XLabel Date/Time

Y1Label Y1

Y2Label Y2

Units mm.day^-1

Format 1

Easting 0.000000

Northing 0.000000

Latitude 0.000000

Longitude 0.000000

Elevation 0.000000

*

Anchor
Climate data formats - ASCII grids Climate data formats - ASCII grids

Climate data formats - ASCII grids

The Climate data import tool will import any grids that follow the ESRI ASCIIGrid format and are in latitude-longitude projection. Therefore, it replaces the need to use a large set of Data Drills (eg. 10,000) by importing ASCIIGrid files of the catchment directly. The main benefits of ASCIIGrids are that the files are smaller and easier to manage, and Silo can usually supply them more easily than thousands of Data Drills.

Table 33 shows what type of gridded data file format can be used for input data in the Climate data import tool.

Table 33. Climate data import tool (gridded data file formats)

File format	Rainfall	PET
ASCIIGrids
Climate Atlas of Australia
QDNR Silo
Silo 2006 standard
Silo comma delimited
Silo Morton

For Climate Atlas of Australia file types, see the Bureau of Meteorology’s web site:

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/index.shtml

For QDNR Silo; Silo 2006 standard; Silo comma delimited; Silo Morton; Silo original standard see the Queensland Government Department of Environment and Resource management (QDERM) website:

http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/silo/

CentralMeridian, FirstParallel, SecondParallel, OriginLatDD, OrginLongDD, EastFalseOrigin and NorthFalseOrigin are parameters to transform the Albers or Lambert projections of the scenario data into latitude and longitude co-ordinates of the climate ASCII grid data. They have been set to defaults for all of Australia and can be altered to better represent your modelling location. It is recommended that the Australian standard be adopted. Table 34 specifies the Albers projection parameter values for Australia and Queensland.

Table 34. Albers projection parameter values (Australia & QLD)

For importing all other file formats, only the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) Zone needs to be defined. The UTM is a geographic coordinate system that provides locations on the Earth’s surface. It divides the Earth into 60 zones, from West to East. Australia falls into zones 49-56. Refer to the Geosceience Australia website (www.ga.gov.au) for details about the UTM zones in Australia.

ASCIIGrid advanced example 1

Suppose you have data for one catchment and you want to use it to analyse a second catchment that is mostly in the same area, but with a small part that falls outside the available data.

In the example shown in Figure 7, the rectangle "a" indicates the area covered by the ASCIIGrid files. Shape "A" is the original catchment that the data was obtained for, and shape "C" is the catchment that you want to analyse. The problem is that part of "C" is outside of rectangle "a".

Providing that you are willing to accept that the results will be of lower quality, and also providing that no part of "C" is further than 10 kilometres from the boundary of "a" then the pre-processor will use the data from the nearest cell in "a" for the portion of "C" that is outside of "a". This is identical to the behaviour of the "Import rainfall data from SILO" option. To do this the prototypeRaster can be any raster (ASCIIGrid file) from "a".

Figure 7. Importing ASCIIGrid files (case 1)

Image Added

ASCIIGrid advanced example 2

An additional set of data "b" that was used to analyse catchment "B" (Figure 8).

Grid "a" covers the period 1950-2004 and grids "b" covers the period 1987 to 2007. If you need to compare events in 2006-2007 for catchment "C" with the long term (50 years), you need to make use of data from both sets "a" and "b".

In this example the prototypeRaster should again be any raster from set "a". Note that by doing so the Climate Data Import Tool will again handle the small part of "C" that is outside of "a" in the same way as it did in Case 1, even when it is using data from "b". Therefore, if a small portion of a catchment is outside one set of grids then make your prototypeRaster one of that same set.

Figure 8. Importing ASCIIGrid files (case 2)

Image Added