Point Source Emissions Missing in 1km Domain: “No source-cell intersections found” Error in GRDMAT

SMOKE
1

Hello CMAS community,

I’m currently working on a nested SMOKE-CMAQ setup for the Washington D.C. region, involving 12km, 4km, and 1km domains. I’ve encountered an issue while processing point source emissions (ptegu) for the 1km_DC domain. To troubleshoot, I isolated a single point source and successfully processed it through SMOKE for both the 12km and 4km domains. The emissions appeared as expected in the 4km domain, and a VERDI plot confirmed that the resulting plume overlaps with the area covered by the 1km domain. I also verified the domain configuration using MCIP outputs and manually calculated the lower-left corner (XORIG, YORIG) for the 1km domain based on the 4km parent grid. These checks confirm that the source should fall within the boundaries of the 1km domain.

Screenshot 2025-04-14 at 4.56.57 PM
Screenshot 2025-04-14 at 4.56.57 PM781×776 35.6 KB

‘12US1_459X299’, ! abbrev.=12US1, common name = Continental 12km grid
‘12CONUS1’, -2556000.000, -1728000.000, 12.D3, 12.D3, 459, 299, 1

‘4km_DC’, ! abbrev.=4DC, common name = 4km grid for running over DC
‘LAM_40N97W’, 984000.000, -348000.000, 4.D3, 4.D3, 288, 288, 1

‘1km_DC’, ! abbrev.=1DC, common name = 1km grid for running over DC
‘LAM_40N97W’, 1670000.000, 30000.000, 1.D1, 1.D1, 64, 64, 1

However, when I try to run SMOKE for this point source on the 1km domain, the process fails with the following error in the grdmat log file:

*** ERROR ABORT in subroutine GRDMAT
No source-cell intersections found.

This issue is not limited to one source—I’m seeing the same error for all point sources when processed for the 1km domain.

I’d appreciate any advice on how to verify this issue in SMOKE’s point source processing for nested domains.

Thanks in advance for your help,

Annual_ptagfire_onetime_12US1_2017gb_17j.csh.txt (6.9 KB)
grdmat_ptegu_2017gb_17j_1DC.log.txt (15.3 KB)
smkinven_ptegu_2017gb_17j.log.txt (40.8 KB)

2

Double check your grid definition. For 1 km the cell width and height should be 1.D3 or 1000. meters.

3

@james.beidler,

Thank you for pointing that out! It was a simple issue on my end—changing 1.D1 to 1.D3 resolved it. I appreciate your attention and support.

However, I’m still seeing the same error for the following sources: ptagfire, ptfire_othna, and othpt. Could this indicate that there are no emissions data available for these sources in the current setup?

4

All of the US fire sectors (ptagfire, ptfire-rx, ptfire-wild) should have little to no emissions within your domain. Ptagfire contains emissions from a process, the burning of crop residue, that typically does not occur in the DC metro area.

Both ptfire_othna and othpt are sectors containing emissions outside the US. You do not need to run these or other non-US sectors (e.g. othar) for your 1 km domain.

5

You might already have fixed it, but also double check the number of zeros in the xorig value for your 1km_DC domain - should it indeed be 1670000.000 or instead be 167000.000? The first option would put it further to the west than the origin of your 4km_DC domain.

Edit: I was confusing east and west offsets - 1670000.000 looks fine. Sorry about that!

6

Sorry, please ignore my last post, I was not thinking straight. Your XORIG value is fine.

1 Like
7

That makes perfect sense—thanks for the clarification! I’ll exclude those sectors from the 1 km domain runs going forward.

Appreciate your help in clearing that up.