Definition of GENESIS L1a, L1b, and L2 "txt" format

"txt" format files have two sections:  
  1. metadata 
  2. quasi-tabular numerical data.

There is no separator between the metadata section and tabular data section.
However, each line of the metadata section has an equal sign.
The beginning of the tabular data is signaled by the first line of data without an equal sign.

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METADATA

The metadata section comes first.
Each metadata record has the format

  VariableName = Value

VariableName is a variable name, which is a string beginning with an alphabetic character, and with no whitespace characters.
Value can be anything, including an array enclosed in brackets.

The following are special variables used in defining the tabular data: 

  DataTypeName
  DataTypeID
  Fields(i)

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TABULAR DATA

Each line of tabular data consists of an integer DataTypeID followed by the numerical fields appropriate to that data type.
Numerical fields are separated by white space.

Following is an example of usage extracted from the L2 txt file:

The metadata contains the records:

  DataTypeName = { "SACC-Profile", "NCEP_FNL-Profile" }
  DataTypeID = { 65, 83 }
  Fields(65) = { "Height", "Lat", "Lon", "Refractivity", "Temperature", "Pressure" , "WV Pressure"}
  Fields(83) = { "Height", "Lat", "Lon", "Refractivity", "Temperature", "Pressure" , "WV Pressure"}

These indicate that the tabular data may contain two types of records:

  SACC-Profile     with DataTypeID 65
  NCEP_FNL-Profile with DataTypeID 83

and the metadata record, 

  Fields(65) = { "Height", "Lat", "Lon", "Refractivity", "Temperature", "Pressure" , "WV Pressure"}

indicates that tabular data records which begin with "65" (signifying SACC-Profile data) will contain 7 data fields: Height, Lat, Lon, Refractivity, Temperature, Pressure , WV Pressure .

For example, the tabular data record,

  65      0.2179380810E+00        -.6369854460E+02        -.6937615900E+02        0.2986856280E+03        0.2662004660E+03        0.9498059320E+03    0.5368842820E+01

is SACC-Profile data with

  Height = 0.2179380810E+00
  Lat = -.6369854460E+02
  Lon = -.6937615900E+02
  Refractivity = 0.2986856280E+03
  Temperature = 0.2662004660E+03
  Pressure = 0.9498059320E+03
  WV Pressure = 0.5368842820E+01

A field value of -9999 indicates that the value is unknown or not available or not applicable.

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