ICON/BCON Output Files

When I run ICON and BCON using my generated MCIP files, I keep getting binary files instead of the .nc files as found in the benchmark run. Using these files in my CMAQ run throw errors. Both ICON and BCON say they complete successfully.

Is this normal or is there a variable that needs to be switched.

Can you successfully run ncdump -h on the output files generated by ICON and BCON? If you can, these files likely are correctly formatted ioapi/netcdf files given that both ICON and BCON say they completed successfully. You could also try using a tool like m3xtract (part of the ioapi package) to see if you can successfully open these files and extract variables from it. If that tests succeeds, the structure of the files should be o.k.

What is the error message you receive when you run CMAQ with the ICON and BCON files you created as inputs?

Actually, the simplest test probably uses M3Tools program m3stat:

setenv FOO  <path for file>
<wherever>/$BIN/m3stat FOO DEFAULT

and you should get on-screen either a statistics-report for file ${FOO}, or an error-report.
(where <wherever>/$BIN/m3stat gives your installed I/O API base-directory and binary-type)

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I used all three tests described and they all performed perfectly. I thought it had something to do with these files but it has to be something else then.

The log file is attached for the CMAQ run

Thanks for the help!
CTM_LOG_000.v531_gcc_MarchDustEvent_20100310.txt (11.1 KB)

You are correct, your CMAQ error has nothing to do with the ICON or BCON files you created.

Your log file shows that your MCIP files start at March 10, 18:00:00 UTC (2010069:180000) but it seems you are trying to start your CMAQ simulations at March 10, 00:00:00 UTC. This leads to the error messages “Time step error for file: MET_CRO_2D - M3WARN: DTBUF 0:00:00 March 10, 2010 (2010069:000000)” and “Time step not available for file: MET_CRO_2D - M3WARN: DTBUF 0:00:00 March 10, 2010 (2010069:000000)” which trigger the CMAQ crash. To solve, either prepare MCIP files that start at the CMAQ start time specified in the run script or adjust the CMAQ start time (and potentially run length) in the run script accordingly.