WAWG Code Release

Version 4 of the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM4) is a capability of the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM), which is a component of the Community Earth System Model, (CESM). WACCM4 was first released with the public release of CESM1.0 on June 25, 2010, with several updates released subsequently. WACCM-X is available as an option to extend the top boundary of the atmosphere model to the upper thermosphere. WACCM4 is supported for use only as a component of CESM, and not for uncoupled standalone calculations.

Users who wish to publish science with CESM1(WACCM) are encouraged to use a scientifically validated configuration. For most users, this will mean using CESM1.0, which was used for all CESM runs done for CMIP5. Users should select the latest incremental update (i.e. CESM1.0.6) described in the CESM1.0 release notes. Users who use CESM1.2 should be advised that there are currently no scientifically validated configurations for that code base.  The purpose of the CESM1.2 releases is to make available to the CESM user community model functionality and infrastructure improvements. It is to be used as a code base for new model developments that require this new infrastructure. Users wishing to publish science using configurations that are not scientifically validated should  validate the climate by doing long control runs for each compset they wish to use, and comparing them to CESM1.0 runs using our  standard diagnostics packages.

Users may acquire the CESM source code by going to the CESM 1.0 release page and clicking on "registration" under the section "Acquiring the Release Code". Once you have agreed to the terms of use, you will be sent an email containing the location of the Subversion repository along with a user name and password. The username/password can be used with Subversion client software, such as the command-line tool svn, to download the code. Detailed instructions for downloading the code are available in the User Guides for CESM 1.0. Before downloading, please check for the latest model version (i.e. 1.0.6, rather than 1.0) and modify the download path accordingly.

WACCM4 is built by selecting an appropriate WACCM component set and building the CESM as described in the User Guides for CESM 1.0. Scripts included with the source code will automatically download the input data sets needed to run the model for the component set and horizontal grid selected by the user. WACCM may be run coupled to a full ocean (B-compsets, supported at the f19_g16 grid), or a data ocean (F-compsets, supported at the f19_f19 and f45_f45 grids). The CAM documentation for CESM1.0 include sections for WACCM in the CAM scientific description.

A quickstart guide for building and running WACCM on NCAR's bluefire and NASA's pleiades clusters is now available for download here.

Please check the WACCM Support Forum for known bugs, other software and run-time issues, science issues, and general announcements. The forum threads Known problems and suggestions for running WACCM and Guide to debugging WACCM runs are updated regularly with helpful information. 

Post-processing Analysis Tools

GEOV is an IDL-based viewer for geophysical history files created by NCAR's CAM, WACCM and MOZART models. GEOV can be downloaded as a gzipped tarball here.

Additional CAM diagnostic packages are described under CAM Post-Processing Utilities on the CAM documentation page. Diagnostic packages for all model components (atmosphere, land, ice, and ocean) can be found from the component post-processing utilities page.

Validating CESM/WACCM

Users may validate their implementation of CESM/WACCM by repeating experiments we have done at NCAR, and using the component post-processing utilities to compare the climate generated to output we have made available publicly on the Earth System Grid. Please visit our CESM 1.0 experiments and diagnostics page for an updated list of experiments with links to output data locations. Output from additional experiments will be made available on a timeline in accordance with the CMIP5 data policy.