Releases | Open Sustainable Technology

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.2.2

This bugfix release addresses several issues in the MPAS-Atmosphere model
and in the MPAS infrastructure. Specific changes include:

Fix to a portability issue in the MPAS registry 'parse' tool, which caused
files in the src/core_<CORE>/inc directory to not be generated correctly at
build time on some systems (PR #1229).
Addition of two fields, brtemp and cldmask, that are needed by MPAS-JEDI.
Although not needed by stand-alone MPAS-Atmosphere, these fields are
associated with the jedi_da package and therefore have no effect when
MPAS-Atmosphere is run without setting config_jedi_da = true (PR #1232).
Removal of a redundant query of the nCellsSolve dimension in the
physics_run_init routine. The extra query had no impact on results, and its
removal can be considered clean-up (PR #1236).

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Ted Mansell (NOAA NSSL) and Michael Toy (NOAA GSL)
for identifying issues that have been addressed in this release.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda 7 months ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.2.1

This bugfix release addresses several issues in the MPAS-Atmosphere model
and in the MPAS infrastructure. Notable changes include:

Improved detection of an 'mpi_f08' module (PR #1202), as well as improved
detection of netCDF and PnetCDF library paths (PR #1203), in the top-level
Makefile.
The addition of a missing dependency in the physics Makefile to correct
parallel build issues (PR #1204).
Fixes to the CMake build files used by MPAS-JEDI (PR #1205).
Fixes to double-precision builds of MPAS-Atmosphere (PR #1207, PR #1208).
Correction of the calculation of height AGL used in the computation of 1-km
radar reflectivity fields (PR #1213).
Correction of an issue that prevented the MYNN PBL scheme from being used
without also using the Thompson aerosol-aware microphysics (PR #1215).
Fixes to allow MPAS-Atmosphere to be built without physics (i.e., dynamics-
only builds) (PR #1221).
Various code cleanup and minor corrections (PR #1206, PR #1212, PR #1224,
PR #1226).

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Michael Toy (NOAA GSL) for first identifying the error
in the calculation of the height AGL array that affect the 1 km radar reflectivity fields.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda 9 months ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.2.0

This release of MPAS introduces several significant changes to MPAS-Atmosphere.

New physics

The Noah-MP v5.0.1 land-surface model is now available by setting
config_lsm_scheme = 'sf_noahmp' in the &physics namelist group.
- New static files that include the soilcomp, soilcl1, soilcl2,
  soilcl3, and soilcl4 fields are required when activating Noah-MP in
  the model.
The aerosol-aware Thompson microphysics (as in WRF v4.1.4) is available by
setting config_microp_scheme = 'mp_thompson_aerosols' in the &physics
namelist group.
- An aerosol climatology file (QNWFA_QNIFA_SIGMA_MONTHLY.dat) is used when
  running the init_atmosphere_model program to produce initial and lateral
  boundary conditions for nifa and nwfa.

Physics changes

Physics schemes in the physics_mmm directory are now obtained from a
separate, shared MMM-physics repository at compile time using the
manage_externals tool.
The revised Monin-Obukhov scheme replaces the Monin-Obukhov scheme in the
'mesoscale_reference' suite.

GPU capabilities

The scalar transport code has been ported to GPUs using OpenACC directives.
- The atmosphere core must be compiled with OPENACC=true.
- Additional timers in the log file capture host-device data transfer times.

Infrastructure

The build system no longer requires an intermediate clean step when compiling
one core before another.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda 10 months ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.1.0

This release of MPAS introduces several updates and new capabilities for MPAS-Atmosphere, most notably:

The MYNN Surface Layer and Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) schemes have been updated. The PBL scheme includes the options needed to run the Eddy Diffusivity Mass Flux (EDMF) scheme.
A separate driver for the parameterization of surface processes over sea-ice points has been added.
The build system now tests for the availability of the modern mpi_f08 module in the MPI library. If detected, the mpi_f08 module interface to Fortran MPI routines will be used in favor of the older mpi module interface.
The atmosphere core now supports the storage and retrieval of time-invariant fields in a separate I/O stream, offering significant disk space savings, especially in cases where large ensembles or cycled simulations are being run. See Section 8.3 of the User's Guide for more details.
The top-level Makefile provides a new intel build target for the Intel oneAPI Fortran, C, and C++ compiler suite.
To support real-data simulations on meshes with grid distances approaching 1 km or less, the init_atmosphere core provides an option, config_30s_supersample_factor, for super-sampling of the 30 arc-second terrestrial fields (terrain, land use, soil category, and MODIS FPAR monthly vegetation fraction).
When compiling, PRECISION=single is now the default, and double-precision builds must be specified with PRECISION=double.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda about 1 year ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.0.2

This bugfix release addresses several issues in the MPAS-Atmosphere model:

Generalize the mpas_sphere_angle function to provide correct results for non-unit-radius spheres. This generalization fixes problems in remapping static fields to the outermost layer of specified-zone cells in limited-area meshes. (PR #1148)
Initialize mvd_r and mvd_c before first use in the Thompson microphysics scheme to prevent the potential use of uninitialized memory, which could lead to floating-point exceptions. (PR #1152)
Correct the units for the grid scale input field to the Thompson cloud fraction scheme. (PR #1153)

Acknowledgements: Thanks are due to Brett Wilt (The Weather Company) for first identifying the bug in the units of dx_p in the call to the Thompson cloud fraction scheme.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda about 1 year ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.0.1

This bugfix release addresses several issues in MPAS-Atmosphere, specifically:

Fix an OpenMP error in the deallocation of an array (rthdynten) when neither
the Grell-Freitas nor the Tiedtke/nTiedtke cumulus schemes are used. (PR #1099)
Fix a compilation issue due to a missing include path for the physics_mmm
directory when certain Fortran compilers are used. (PR #1096)
Fix an issue in reading real-valued global attributes from input files with
SMIOL when the input file is of a different precision than the compiled
precision of MPAS. (PR #1091)
Fix a memory leak for the recloud_p, reice_p, and resnow_p arrays in the
deallocate_microphysics routine. (PR #1090)
Correct the units and description for the rt_diabatic_tend, pv_vertex,
pv_edge, and pv_cell variables in the atmosphere core's Registry.xml file. (PRs #1089 and #1092)

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda almost 2 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.0.0

This major release of MPAS introduces significant new features in the
MPAS-Atmosphere model and its supporting software infrastructure.

Initialization:

Enable parallel remapping of static fields with arbitrary graph partition
files; special CVT partition files are no longer required.
Reset the default for the lower air-temperature extrapolation
(config_extrap_airtemp) from 'linear' to 'lapse-rate' in the namelist. This
applies to initialization and to lateral boundary condition generation for
MPAS-A.
Set the condition for the lower extrapolation of the horizontal velocity
such that it returns the lowest analysis level value instead of a linear
extrapolation when the requested level is below the analysis level.
Create a new init case (13) for creating 3-d CAM-MPAS grids.

Physics:

Update the Noah land surface scheme to the WRF 4.5 release.
Update the MM5 surface layer scheme to the WRF 4.5 release.
Implemented the CCPP-compliant version of:
- the revised MM5 surface layer scheme;
- the parameterization of the gravity-wave drag over orography;
- the YSU Planetary Boundary Layer scheme;
- the scale-aware nTiedtke parameterization of convection; and
- the WSM6 cloud microphysics parameterization.
Correct the initialization of the maximum snow albedo over sea ice points
(now set to 0.75 instead of 0).
Fix the option that defines the surface albedo over sea ice points. The
default option is now set to zero and the default value for the surface
albedo over sea ice points is set to 0.65.
In the dynamics, rework the computation of the advective tendency of
potential temperature needed as forcing in the nTiedtke and Grell-Freitas
parameterizations of deep convection. The advective tendency of potential
temperature is now computed the same way for the nTiedtke and Grell-Freitas
convection schemes.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The updated Noah scheme requires new look-up tables.
The checkout_data_files.sh script that is run at build time should correctly
update these tables, but tables in other run directories will need to be
manually updated.

Dynamics:

Modify the regional MPAS-A relaxation-zone filters to increase the
robustness of regional MPAS-A simulations, including access to specific
relaxation-zone filter parameters through the namelist. The defaults for
regional relaxation-zone filtering for the horizontal momentum have been
changed from the previous release.
Generalize the 2nd-order horizontal mixing used in the upper wave absorbing
region in MPAS-A, including access to the configuration parameters through
the namelist.
The pressure-level height diagnostic is now interpolated using ln(p) for
increased accuracy. This significantly reduces the diagnostics height bias
in the previous version.
Change the vertical interpolation weights for projecting cell-centered
variables to w levels to be the vertically integrated average. Previously
the weights represented a linear interpolation in z. These weights are
computed in the initialization code and used in both the initialization and
integration.
Eliminate the need to specify a horizontal length scale in namelists
(config_len_disp). New mesh files supply this length scale, which is read by
the model at start-up.
Include changes to the initialization and to MPAS-A such that this release
can be directly used in CESM/CAM.

Infrastructure:

Introduce a new I/O layer, the Simple MPAS I/O Layer. SMIOL provides a
subset of the parallel I/O functionality of PIO, but with a simplified
design that minimizes external dependencies to just the Parallel-NetCDF
library. When the $PIO environment variable is not set at compile time,
SMIOL will be used in MPAS.
Refactor halo communication to make use of a new group (aggregated) halo
exchange module. The new mpas_halo module is designed to be amenable to
GPU-direct communication of halos with OpenACC. In this release, however,
OpenACC directives have not yet been added.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda almost 2 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 7.3

This minor release addresses one issue in the MPAS-Atmosphere model.

MPAS-Atmosphere:

Update the checkout_data_files.sh script to use HTTPS rather than the
unencrypted Git protocol when obtaining the MPAS-Data repository from
GitHub.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda about 3 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 7.2

This minor release addresses several issues in the MPAS-Atmosphere model.

MPAS-Atmosphere:

Correct the use of uninitialized memory in the init_atm_case_squall_line
routine by initializing the qvb array to zero before its first use.
Fix a bug in the vertical extrapolation of relative humidity and specific
humidity to model levels below the lowest first-guess level when first-guess
levels are given in top-to-bottom order in the input intermediate file.
Fix reproducibility issues in several fields within the Noah LSM over land-ice
points when running with different MPI task counts; however, only one of these
fields -- smstav, the surface moisture availability field -- persists outside
of the physics driver and is written to MPAS-Atmosphere restart files.
Correct the units and description attributes for the GWDO fields var2d, con,
oa1, oa2, oa3, oa4, ol1, ol2, ol3, and ol4 in both the init_atmosphere and
atmosphere core Registry.xml files.
Add code that had inadvertently been omitted for computing dtheta_dt_mp, the
potential temperature heating rate from microphysics. Prior to this change,
the dtheta_dt_mp field would always contain a constant zero value when written
to model output files.
Correct a check on the availability of the dtheta_dt_mix variable when
computing depv_dt_mix in the PV diagnostics module.
Correct the parallel computation of iLev_DT (and other fields that depend on
it, including u_pv, v_pv, theta_pv, vort_pv, depv_dt_diab_pv, and
depv_dt_fric_pv) in the PV diagnostics module.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda about 3 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 7.1

This minor release addresses several issues in the MPAS-Atmosphere model and
initialization, and it corrects several minor compilation issues.

MPAS-Atmosphere:

In calculating moist air density in the real-data initialization case, virtual
temperature, rather than temperature, should be used.
An out-of-bounds array access in the GWDO scheme when running with multiple
OpenMP threads has been corrected.
A check has been added in the init_atmosphere core to ensure that the
intermediate file interval and the 'surface' stream output interval are
consistent.
A non-standard BOZ-literal constant has been corrected in the
module_ra_cam_support.F file. The non-standard constant lead to build
failures, particularly with newer versions of the GNU compilers.

General software:

The logic to add PIO libraries to the definition of LIBS in the top-level
Makefile has been updated to accommodate newer versions (approx. 2.5.2 or
later) of the PIO library; without the fix to the Makefile, builds would
fail with the message

  Checking for a usable PIO library...
  ************ ERROR ************
  Failed to compile a PIO test program
  Please ensure the PIO environment variable is set to the PIO installation directory
  ************ ERROR ************

Various options for the 'gfortran' build target have been cleaned up.
Occasional parallel build failures related to a race condition in the ezxml
library compilation have been addressed.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda over 3 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 7.0

This major release of MPAS introduces significant new features in the MPAS-Atmosphere model as well as minor fixes and clean-up to the software infrastructure.

Atmosphere

Significant new features or changes to MPAS-Atmosphere v7.0 include:

The capability to perform limited-area simulations on the surface of the sphere.
An update to the physics schemes in the 'mesoscale_reference' suite to match the scheme versions in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model v4.0.3; the WSM6 scheme matches WRF v4.1.
The addition of two new upper absorbing layer formulations.
An initial relative humidity field that is computed w.r.t. ice for temperatures below freezing, consistent with the computation used for the model output files.
A fix for the communication of effective radii between the WSM6 and RRTMG schemes when config_microp_re=true.
The ability to specify an explicit list of model level heights when constructing the vertical coordinate surfaces in the init_atmosphere core.
A change to the default sources of data for terrain height and land use category to GMTED2010 and MODIS 20-class, respectively.
Added MODIS-based sources for monthly albedo, monthly vegetation fraction, and maximum snow albedo; these MODIS datasets are now the default.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The updated physics schemes require new look-up tables, in particular, for the Noah land-surface model. The checkout_data_files.sh script that is run at build time should correctly update these tables, but tables in other run directories will need to be manually updated.

Infrastructure

Changes to the shared MPAS infrastructure include:

A new build target, llvm, to enable building MPAS with the clang and flang compilers.
Updates to the xlf build target to support building on Linux/POWER systems with the XL compilers.
Various minor fixes and clean-up.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda almost 6 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 6.3

This minor release addresses two minor issues in MPAS-Atmosphere.

The default setting for config_o3climatology was previously 'false',
which caused the model to use a single seasonal ozone profile everywhere
in the model domain when the RRTMG radiation schemes was used. The default
is now 'true', which causes the model to use the same monthly ozone
climatology for RRTMG as is used by the CAM radiation schemes.
Model simulations using a non-integer timestep would result in 'xtime'
variables in model output files that were incorrect, which caused problems
when trying to restart the model at the correct time. The xtime variable
is now correct when the valid time of output files has no fractional
seconds.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda almost 6 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 6.2

This minor release addresses two issues in the MPAS infrastructure with how character strings are read from netCDF files via PIO, and it adds the 'recursive' attribute to the mpas_log_write routine to avoid errors raised by several newer compilers when critical errors are written.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda about 6 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 6.1

This minor release of MPAS corrects some minor issues with the sea-ice biogeochemistry. It fixes the restartability test with BGC, corrects some BGC namelist flags and removes the zero value for a BGC dimension.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by akturner almost 7 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 6.0

This major release of MPAS introduces the MPAS-Seaice core, and it includes new
functionality, general improvements, and fixes to the Ocean, Land Ice, and
Atmosphere cores. Also included are various small improvements, optimizations,
and clean-up in the shared software infrastructure. Specific changes to each of
the MPAS components are detailed below.

Framework:

Introduction of a new module for logging messages during model execution.
Unless any errors are encountered, MPAS cores now write a single log file,
named log.<core>.0000.out. In case errors occur, each MPI task will write
its own error log file named log.<core>.<task ID>.err.
Performance enhancements to aggregated halo exchanges used in the Ocean,
Land-ice, and Sea-ice cores.
Minor enhancements to the MPAS "stream manager", including the ability to
specify "final_only" for the "input_interval" or "output_interval" of a stream
to read/write that stream only at the model stop time.
Various bug-fixes and other clean-up to ensure that the framework can be used
in coupled-model configurations involving more than one MPAS core.

Atmosphere:

Relative to the v5.0 release, the MPAS v6.0 release represents a minor
increment in capability for the MPAS-Atmosphere core. MPAS-Atmosphere v6.0
includes:

An increase of the default number of layers from 41 to 55 to match
the standard experimental set-up used at NCAR.
The addition of support for the use of GMTED2010 terrain elevation,
matching the default terrain dataset used in the WRF model.
- Set config_topo_data = 'GMTED2010' in the namelist.init_atmosphere file
  when interpolating static fields.
Computation of the GWDO sub-grid-scale orography fields in a way that is more
consistent with the pre-computed fields used in the WRF model.
Support for parallel builds of the init_atmosphere and atmosphere cores.
- Use make -j N ....
A significant reduction in the size of model initial conditions files.

Land Ice:

The last MPAS release with land ice improvements was v3.0. MPAS v6.0 adds the
following significant features relative to v3.0:

Adds support for the First-Order velocity solver through the external Albany
library.
Adds a thermal solver that can be solved in terms of temperature (verified)
or enthalpy (experimental).
Adds subglacial hydrology model.
Adds a number of calving options including eigencalving.
Adds an adaptive time stepper.
Adds analysis members for global and regional statistics.
Ability to couple with E3SM.
Adds a number of test cases and model configurations.
General cleanup and bug fixes.

Ocean:

Ability to couple with E3SM.
New in-situ analysis computations.
Division of tracers into groups to control output, algorithms, and forcing.
Addition of biogeochemistry tracers and column computations.

Sea Ice:

First release of MPAS-Seaice.
MPAS-Seaice solves the sea-ice momentum equation with an
Elastic-Viscous-Plastic rheology and variational horizontal operators adapted
for the MPAS mesh.
Horizontal transport of mass and tracers uses an incremental remapping scheme.
Column physics and biogeochemistry uses an early version of the Icepack
library.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by matthewhoffman about 7 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 5.3

This minor release of MPAS corrects an issue with the initialization of the water vapor mixing ratio field in MPAS-Atmosphere, and it also adds two other fixes that should not affect model results.

The MPAS-Atmosphere initialization program (init_atmosphere_model) had previously assumed that any relative humidity field provided in an intermediate file was specified with respect to liquid water at or above 273.15 K, and with respect to ice below this temperature. However, intermediate files produced by the WPS's ungrib.exe program have the RH field adjusted so that is with respect to liquid water everywhere. With this release, the init_atmosphere core correctly interprets the RH field in producing the initial water vapor mixing ratio field. Note that, when initializing from a specific humidity (SPECHUMD) rather than RH, there is no change to results.

Besides the above fix, this release includes two other changes that should have no impact on results:

The "units" and "description" for scalar tendencies have been corrected in the MPAS-Atmosphere Registry.xml file.
The sign of the edgeNormalVectors field has been corrected for boundary edges that represent positive normal inflow. Although this change addresses a bug in the code, MPAS-Atmosphere does not have boundary edges, and other MPAS cores either employ no-flux or no-slip conditions along lateral boundaries or arrange such that all boundary edges represent positive outgoing normal velocity.

Thanks very much to The Weather Company for identifying the bug in initializing with relative humidity!

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda about 7 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 5.2

This minor release of MPAS corrects issues when using the PIO 2.x library versions. With the changes in this release, it should be possible to use the latest PIO release from https://github.com/NCAR/ParallelIO/.

When compiling MPAS with a PIO 2.x library version, the USE_PIO2=true option should be added to the MPAS build command.

The PIO 2.x library versions support integrated performance timing with the GPTL library; however, the MPAS infrastructure does not currently provide calls to initialize this library before it is used in PIO. Therefore, it is recommended to add -DPIO_ENABLE_TIMING=OFF to the options in the cmake command used to build PIO.

The following steps may be used as a rough guide to obtaining and installing the latest PIO code:

git clone [email protected]:NCAR/ParallelIO.git
cd ParallelIO
export PIOSRC=`pwd`
cd ..
mkdir build
cd build
export CC=mpicc
export FC=mpif90
cmake -DNetCDF_C_PATH=$NETCDF -DNetCDF_Fortran_PATH=$NETCDF -DPnetCDF_PATH=$PNETCDF -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/somewhere/writable/pio2 -DPIO_ENABLE_TIMING=OFF $PIOSRC
make
make install

In the above steps, /somewhere/writable/pio2 should be changed to the installation path for PIO, and after successfully installing, the PIO environment variable should be set to this path as well.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda over 7 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 5.1

This minor release of MPAS introduces fixes for several issues in the MPAS v5.0 major release of the atmosphere core, including:

Re-engineering of the 3-d divergence damping mechanism to improve model stability in some variable-resolution simulations
Making the upper gravity-wave absorbing layer scale aware, which is necessary to effectively damp vertically propagating waves in the coarse part of variable-resolution meshes
A fix for patches of high 2-m theta sometimes found in simulations with the MYNN surface layer scheme (part of the 'convection_permitting' suite)
A new initialization option to extrapolate temperature below the first-guess surface with a lapse rate, needed for usable initialization in some cases
A fix for an issue in which writing 'mslp', but not an isobaric temperature field, to an output stream lead to garbage for MSLP field
Changes to fix compilation issues on macOS case-insensitive filesystems with GEN_F90=true
Changes to properly handle the ECMWF 100-289 cm soil layer
A fix for initializing with hybrid-level first-guess data that provides a 3-d 'PRESSURE' field
A fix for compiling on BlueGene systems
Fixes for various memory issues, mostly related to the expanded use of 'packages' in the v5.0 release

Note that namelist files used with MPAS v5.0 must be modified before they can be used with MPAS v5.1. Specifically, the 'config_smdiv_p_forward' namelist option has been removed, and the default value for 'config_smdiv' has been changed to 0.1.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda almost 8 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 5.0

This major release of MPAS introduces new capabilities, options, and enhancements to MPAS-Atmosphere, as well as many small improvements in the MPAS framework.

Significant changes to MPAS-Atmosphere include:

A new physics suite, 'convection_permitting', that is suitable for applications where convection-permitting meshes (dx < 10 km) are employed, including variable-resolution meshes spanning hydrostatic to nonhydrostatic resolutions
Updates to the versions of existing physics schemes
A new vertical level distribution (selected by default when running init_atmosphere_model) that has been used in several MPAS-Atmosphere real-time experiments, including the prediction of tropical cyclones
The ability to initialize the water vapor mixing ratio directly from specific humidity rather than relative humidity
An option to compute sub-grid-scale orography statistics for use by the GWDO scheme directly on the native MPAS mesh from the 30-arc-second topography used for the model terrain field
The use of "packages" to save memory by selectively allocating fields based on run-time choices of physics suite or schemes
Substantial performance optimizations to the dynamical solver (with contributions from Thomas Henderson (then at NOAA), Robert Sinkovits (SDSC), John Dennis (NCAR), and Ryan Cabell (NCAR))
The ability to obtain bit-identical results for any MPI task count (though this may require the addition of compiler flags, e.g., '-fp-model precise' for the ifort compiler)
An experimental hybrid-parallel capability to allow execution with MPI and OpenMP; note that this ability does not currently offer a performance advantage and is being released for further development by collaborators
Complete documentation for all namelist options and fields in the Registry file; units and description for all fields are also written as variable attributes to all model output files
The introduction of a new framework for including diagnostics modules in MPAS-Atmosphere
New diagnostics: Ertel PV diagnostics (thanks to Nick Szapiro (OU)), and convective diagnostics including CAPE and CIN
The ability to write soundings for a specified list of locations at any specified interval during model integration
For data assimilation, an Incremental Analysis Update (IAU) module to reduce initial noise by adding analysis increments over a time window (thanks to Soyoung Ha (NCAR))

Updates and improvements to the MPAS framework include:

A simplified method for building single-precision executables: simply add PRECISION=single to the compilation command-line
Minor performance improvements, e.g., in halo communication
Fixes to allow the infrastructure to correctly handle large meshes (>10^7 cells)
OpenMP threading of memory initialization, buffer copying, etc.
Minor cleanup and bug fixes throughout

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda over 8 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 4.0

This major feature release of MPAS includes the following changes to MPAS cores:

MPAS Framework:
- A new optional keyword, io_type, has been implemented in the XML stream configuration files, allowing the file format and library to be selected on a per-stream basis. More details are available in Section 5.2 of the Users' Guide.
- In the MPAS 3.x releases, fields and global attributes showed up in output files in random order; now, the order of the file contents is based on the order that fields and namelist options were declared in the Registry.xml file of a core.
- A mechanism has been added for decomposing variable dimensions according to arbitrary methods specified by individual MPAS cores.
- Additional changes have been made to remove namespace conflicts across MPAS cores, paving the way for combining multiple MPAS cores into the same executable.
- A few minor improvements have been made to enable MPAS-Atmosphere to run more reliably in single-precision and at high-resolution, especially on large MPI task counts.
MPAS Atmosphere (and init_atmosphere):
- A new split dynamics-transport integration scheme has been introduced, allowing scalar transport to take place on a longer timestep than the other dynamics. Real-data testing indicates that the new scheme offers greater model stability. This scheme, selected by default, is controlled by the new namelist options config_split_dynamics_transport, which controls whether the new option is used, and config_dynamics_split_steps, which sets number of dynamics sub-cycles in a timestep.
- The concept of physics suites has been introduced, allowing groups of physics parameterizations that have been tested together to be selected with a single namelist option; this is an alternative to individually specifying parameterization schemes. By default, MPAS-Atmosphere uses the 'mesoscale_reference' suite, described in Section 6.1 of the MPAS-Atmosphere Users' Guide.
- Improved support for initializing with model-level datasets, in particular, ERA-Interim model level data.
- Scale-adaptive coordinate surface smoothing.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda almost 10 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 3.3

This bugfix release corrects a number of small bugs in the shared MPAS infrastructure:

Fix an issue in the timekeeping library when comparing time intervals with different numbers of years or months
Fix a memory leak when setting times in the time manager
Add improved error messages when attempting to read from non-existent files
Correctly catch error conditions produced by open() when opening XML files
Fix bug in merging var_struct and var_array elements in Registry.xml files
Set the s_d variable within time manager to avoid potential division by zero
Remove an extra if-test to handle r0a field destruction in pools
Avoid allocating memory for inactive package variables
Fix for directory creation for streams when directories are nested within non-writable directories
Permit input streams to have the same filename template
Update infrastructure bootstrapping process to properly handle stream attributes
Fix an issue with interval division when resetting alarms

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda over 10 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 3.2

This bugfix release corrects a three issues with the ocean model.
- Fixes an issue that caused the ocean model to always write out the first time step, even if the configuration of I/O would not have caused that time step to be written.
- Fixes an issue where an invalid configuration option was referenced in the model causing a valid configuration option to be ignored.
- Fixes an issue where PGI compilers (in debug mode) would complain about being passed a null pointer when a package was deactivated.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by douglasjacobsen over 10 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 3.1

This bugfix release corrects an error in MPAS-Atmosphere in the downward extrapolation of RH for model levels that lie below the surface of the initial condition dataset (e.g., GFS). Without this fix, the RH field used to compute the initial water vapor mixing ratio field may contain zero (or possible garbage) values in the lowest model levels.

This bug was only present in v3.0, and not in earlier releases of MPAS-Atmosphere.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda over 10 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 3.0

This is a major feature release for the following MPAS models. Below, subsections include relevant changes from each core.

MPAS Framework
- As a significant step in preparing the MPAS framework for support of multiple MPAS cores being compiled together in the same executable, the internal storage of fields and namelist options has been rewritten; this change principally affects model developers who need to access fields inside the MPAS code.
- To enable full run-time control over file input and output, a new I/O layer has been developed for MPAS. In past releases of MPAS, control over input, restart, and history files took place in the namelist file. Now, all configuration of model input, restart, and history files makes use of separate XML configuration files. A new chapter has been added to the core-specific users' guides to describe the use of this new I/O system.
MPAS Atmosphere and Init-Atmosphere
- Support for soil moisture and soil temperature from ERA-I levels (0-7, 7-28, 28-100, and 100-25 cm);
- a significant reduction in the print statements written to the log files;
- a reduction in the set of fields written to the default model history files; and
- miscellaneous minor bugfixes.
MPAS Land Ice
- updates to support pools and streams
- fix bug in calculation of slope used for SIA velocity
MPAS Ocean
- Support for Gent-McWilliams parameterization
- Support for CVMix including support for KPP
- Addition of the ocean analysis run mode including:
  - Global statistics analysis member
  - Zonal mean analysis member
- Corrections for horizontal pressure gradient when using tilted layers

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by douglasjacobsen over 10 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 2.1

The bugfix release addresses two issues in MPAS-Atmosphere:

The double-precision RRTMG long-wave table, RRTMG_LW_DATA.DBL, was inconsistent with the version of the RRTMG code that was included in MPAS-Atmosphere. The RRTMG_LW_DATA.DBL has been updated in the MPAS-Data repository, and the source code includes changes in the data checkout script to download the latest version of all WRF physics tables from this repository.
In two places in the MPAS-Atmosphere solver, the upwinding coefficient for the 3rd-order advection scheme, config_coef_3rd_order, was incorrectly declared as an integer rather than a real. The bug affects the diagnosis of the covariant vertical velocity omega, resulting in the use of a fourth-order diagnosis as opposed to the third-order diagnosis consistent with the horizontal transport.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda almost 11 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 2.0

This release represents the second major release of MPAS including the
framework and all cores.

The Land Ice core is a new addition.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by douglasjacobsen over 11 years ago

MPAS - MPAS Version 1.5

This release corrects an indexing error in the computation of horizontal mixing for w.

Thanks to Matus Martini for finding this bug.

Climate Change - Earth and Climate Modeling - Fortran
Published by mgduda over 11 years ago

Recent Releases of MPAS

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.2.2

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.2.1

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.2.0

New physics

Physics changes

GPU capabilities

Infrastructure

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.1.0

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.0.2

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.0.1

MPAS - MPAS Version 8.0.0

Initialization:

Physics:

Dynamics:

Infrastructure:

MPAS - MPAS Version 7.3

MPAS-Atmosphere:

MPAS - MPAS Version 7.2

MPAS-Atmosphere:

MPAS - MPAS Version 7.1

MPAS-Atmosphere:

General software:

MPAS - MPAS Version 7.0

MPAS - MPAS Version 6.3

MPAS - MPAS Version 6.2

MPAS - MPAS Version 6.1

MPAS - MPAS Version 6.0

MPAS - MPAS Version 5.3

MPAS - MPAS Version 5.2

MPAS - MPAS Version 5.1

MPAS - MPAS Version 5.0

MPAS - MPAS Version 4.0

MPAS - MPAS Version 3.3

MPAS - MPAS Version 3.2

MPAS - MPAS Version 3.1

MPAS - MPAS Version 3.0

MPAS - MPAS Version 2.1

MPAS - MPAS Version 2.0

MPAS - MPAS Version 1.5

MPAS - MPAS Version 1.4

MPAS - MPAS Version 1.3

MPAS - MPAS Version 1.2