New Weather Model Test Configurations: Toward Hierarchical System Development and Support for UFS Case Studies

[gspetro-NOAA]

The NOAA Earth Prediction Innovation Center is pleased to announce the addition of two new test cases to the UFS Weather Model (WM) baselines. These tests include an idealized, dry baroclinic wave case and a July 2020 convective available potential energy (CAPE) case study in atmosphere-only configurations. They are directly integrated into the recently implemented developmental testing framework, which includes new options for configuring testing within the UFS WM tests-dev directory. The cases allow users to test their changes to model configuration options in a simplified, idealized configuration. Additionally, the 2020 CAPE case provides an example of utilizing user-generated Global Forecast System (GFS) initial conditions to set up and run a UFS WM atmosphere-only configuration for a case of interest. The tests are simple to run and are supported on all Tier-1 platforms as well as via container. GNU testing options are available on Hercules and Hera. Basic visualization options for each case are also available. The integration of these tests supports hierarchical system development (HSD) within the UFS, which has been enabled through the implementation of the aforementioned developmental testing framework.

The idealized, dry baroclinic wave case, provided at C192 resolution and 127 vertical levels, is an atmosphere-only, dynamics-only (i.e., no physics) run that follows the baroclinic instability (with perturbation) test case from Jablonowski and Williamson (2006). This idealized configuration of the WM was provided by Xiaqiong Zhou of NOAA EMC. The July 2020 CAPE case, provided at C48 resolution and 127 vertical levels, is an atmosphere-only run meant to parallel the case study from the Case Studies Page for the UFS Weather Model (developed by the DTC). It utilizes the FV3_GFS_v16 CCPP physics suite and runs with GFS input data for 2020-07-23 0z generated via UFS_UTILS / chgres_cube. Input and fix file data for each case is available for download via an S3 bucket.

Users can find more information about the case configurations and how to run them on Tier-1 platforms and via container in the updated UFS WM User's Guide.