Regional Ancillary Suite error - SRTM data not available for regions above 60 deg

Atmosphere Regional Nesting Suite
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1

I’m trying to set up a domain centred on -34.199, 142.139. I’m getting the following error in the era5_ancil_mean_orog routine. This worked previously on a domain that was centered further to the north. Any suggestions about what I’m doing wrong? Thank you!

Screenshot 2026-01-20 at 1.19.14 pm
Screenshot 2026-01-20 at 1.19.14 pm1150×130 6.92 KB

File “/home/563/clv563/cylc-run/u-bu503/share/contrib_apps/Orography/concat_srtm_tiles.py”, line 169, in get_domain_to_extract

raise Exception(‘!!! ERROR: SRTM data not available for regions above 60 deg. Max:’+str(North)+’ Min:'+str(South))

Exception: !!! ERROR: SRTM data not available for regions above 60 deg. Max:-7 Min:-61

2

I’ve not kept up to date with it but the SRTM data should be coming from /g/data/access/projects/access/data/SRTM/pp, which extends from 60N to ~56S (files are only present when there’s land in the area it represents)

3

I think that is still the case - I’m running Antarctic domains and we have to use the coarser orography which you can set in the ancillary suite rose-suite.conf: rg01_rs01_orog_srtm=false

4

Although @ZhangchengPei has run with a finer orography and knows more of the details!

5

It says the lower bound is 61S, can you move the domain a couple degrees north?

6

Thanks Sonya and Scott. Trying both of these solutions now.

1 Like
7

Yep! Since SRTM data does not cover regions beyond 60°S, I have utilized the GLOBE30 dataset (the default legacy option) and RAMP2 (a newer dataset with better orography over Antarctica), both at 1km resolution. Notably, RAMP2 can be processed at higher resolutions, such as 200m. If you decide to keep the domain edges south of 60°S, I suggest using the RAMP2 dataset for better accuracy.

8

Hi @Claire_Vincent!

Thanks for starting this topic. It looks like some folks have some good insights on what might be going on here. For now, I’ve tagged this topic with community-help, but please do ping us again if you have any additional questions!

Cheers,

Lawrence