CDO

Hi all,

I'm converting JRA-55 6-hour model data, 60 hybrid levels to 37 pressure levels, and would like to confirm that my z-axis description file is correct.
First, I have 60 levels reported in the source files but 61 levels, including level 0 (surface 100000) taken from the JRA-55 TL319 Product Users Handbook,
so my size won't equal 60:

levels    = 100000 99850 99550 99149.9 98549.8 97699.6 96599.4 95299.1 93698.6 91798.2 89697.8 87347 
84696.1 81795.4 78694.6 75444 72042.9 68441.7 64741.2 60990.1 57189.5 53388.7 49587.9 45837.6 42187.2 
38636.8 35186.3 31886.6 28736.1 25736.4 22885.7 20186 17686.4 15386.9 13287.5 11388.1 9689 8164.3 
6763.8 5515 4466.6 3608.1 2914.5 2353 1898.9 1532 1235.1 997.1 804.9 649.3 524 422.2 338.3 268.4 208.9 
158.4 116 80.5 51.5 29 10

Should I be using the numbered levels instead, with this format:

levels    = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 
            27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 
            50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Next -- my vct is alternating hyai to hybi, taken from the file info of an ncdump (cdo -zaxisdes extracted layer midpoints). 
Vctsize is supposed to be the 60 hyai values plus the 60 hybi values plus 2 -- do I add anything to the vct values to 
equal 62 or is the calculation done with ml2pl?

vct       = 0 0.096445657 1 11663.35537 0 0.072366446 0.997 11285.40406 
0 0.052145959 0.994 10729.94941 0 0.035700506 0.989 10014.61505 0 
0.022853849 0.982 9167.247036 0 0.01332753 0.972 8226.244908 0 
0.006737551 0.96 7201.56898 0 0.00248431 0.946 6088.673009 133.0510113 
0.00011327 0.92666949 4950 364.9041489 0 0.904350959 4000 634.6027164 0 
0.879653973 3230 959.7971673 0 0.851402028 2610 1347.680042 0 0.8195232 
2105 1790.907396 0 0.785090926 1700 2294.84169 0 0.748051583 1370 
2847.484778 0 0.709525152 1105 3468.871488 0 0.668311285 893 4162.956463 
0 0.624370435 720 4891.880833 0 0.580081192 581 5671.82424 0 0.534281758 
469 6476.712996 0 0.48823287 377 7297.469895 0 0.442025301 301 
8122.159791 0 0.395778402 237 8914.082201 0 0.350859178 182 9656.181911 
0 0.307438181 136 10329.43618 0 0.265705638 97 10912.63844 0 0.225873616 
65 11369.64783 0 0.189303522 39 11695.3716 0 0.155046284 20 11861.25309 
0 0.124387469 0 11855.43432 0

If anyone has a working z-axis description for a JRA-55 model level conversion I'd appreciate your advice!