id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	priority	milestone	component	version	resolution	keywords	cc
170	Range check missing data treatment	Huw Lewis	Dave Offiler	"Input from Axel....

{{{
And, back at the old thinner discussion, even if ropp is not able to 
process one occultation in a file, it should still output it, even
if all are set to missing. Thus one always has the same number of
occultations going in and going out. For me that is a major
simplification.
}}}

HL replied:
""This should now be the case for the ROPP thinner. Are you now saying this in the context of the missing profiles from your FM test?""

From Axel...
{{{
no, I am not noticing anything wrong with the thinner yet, but we 
had this discussion already with the thinner, where the old ROPP
just ignored profiles when there was nothing to thin, while I said 
that in these cases I want an occultation with all missing data. So 
nothing to worry about in the thinner. But if the forward propagator
 is doing the same thing, then I'd like to have that changed.
}}}

The ropp_io_rangecheck currently 'zaps' an output Level if all variables are missing. This can lead to problems, particularly if there is missing data in the first profile of a multifile for example. It may also be confusing to users when the input structure is not compatible with the output. I believe these checks in ropp_io_rangecheck were implemented for efficiency? We do not save considerable space in not outputting missing data to file.

We should consider removing this 'zapping' approach to missing data, or have two levels of range checking, one where users can specify to only keep valid data in the output file and one where users can specify to output all data (missing and valid) to guarantee the same number of profiles and same number of data in the input and output files of ropp_io, ropp_fm and ropp_1dvar applications.

"	enhancement	closed	normal	6.1	ropp_io	3.0	fixed	range check	dave.offiler@…