The NCAR Community Climate Model (CCM3)

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ON THE CCM-USERS E-MAIL GROUP (FAQ)

• INTRODUCTION:

  The ccm-users discussion group is an open e-mail forum for rapid exchange of information, ideas, and topics of interest relating to the various versions of the NCAR CCM (Community Climate Model). This includes sharing software tools, datasets, programming tips and examples, as well as discussions of questions, problems and workarounds. The primary motivation for the establishment of this list is to facilitate and encourage communication _between_ the users of the CCM.

  This mail group will also be used to distribute announcements related to the CCM. These announcements will generally contain information on software updates to the CCM, bug fixes, notices of meetings or upcoming events, and so forth.

  The ccm-users mail group is moderated to filter out annoying commercial advertisements. All messages related to the CCM will be sent to the other members of the ccm-users group. Since the members of this mail group are professionals whose time is very valuable, please make a concerted effort to keep the subjects on topic, the volume low and the quality high. The quality of this mail-group can only be maintained by the efforts and personal integrity of the individual members.

• QUESTIONS:

1. HOW DO I GET DOCUMENTATION/HELP WITH THE LATEST CCM MODEL?

   Web-based documentation for CCM3 is at ...

   • CCM3.6/LSM Users Guide This is web-based versions of the Users Guide both for CCM3.6 and the associated version of LSM. You can also download the complete document in Postscript or MS-Word-97 format.

   Hard-copy documentation (CCM3.0 and older) can be requested by talking to Paula Fisher at NCAR. Her e-mail is paulad@ucar.edu, and phone is (303)497-1328. She can send out the latest documentation for you on the model and processing tools.

   BEFORE YOU POST TO THE E-MAIL GROUP WE EXPECT THAT YOU WILL HAVE GONE THROUGH BOTH THE HARD-COPY AND WEB-BASED DOCUMENTATION!! Otherwise we will just point you to the FAQ and wait until you actually start reading the documentation.

2. HOW DO I GET SOURCE CODES AND DATASETS FOR CCM?

   You can also get the files from the web at

   CCM3 source This includes source codes, documentation, and input datasets.

   Or you can access it with ftp...

   ftp to ftp.ucar.edu. Login as "ftp" and give your email address as password. Then

   cd pub/ccm

   And transfer the appropriate files or datasets. Many files are unix tar files and must be un-tar'ed to get the files. And several are compressed with the GNU file-compressor. So use gunzip to decompress them.

3. HOW DO I ADD A OUTPUT VARIABLE TO THE MODEL?

   This is documented in the hardcopy documentation. But, is a common question so we'll make space for it here as well. Basically you need to increase the size of pflds in pagrid.h for each varible you add, add a call to addfld.F for the variable in bldfld.F and add a call to outfld.F for the variable you add at the appropriate place in the model.

4. HOW DO I PROCESS AND PLOT MY DATA AFTER I'VE MADE A MODEL SIMULATION?

   Go to

   http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/ccm3/tools/

   and download "ccm2nc". This is a program that converts from CCM history tape format to NetCDF format. Once, in NetCDF format there are various tools you can use to analyze the results. A good set of tools is the "Component Model Processing Suite" which uses NCL (NCAR Command Language) and NCO (NetCDF Operators). Both, NCL, NCO and NetCDF are all free software. See

   http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/csm/support/CMPS/index.shtml

   To get NCL see

   http://ngwww.ucar.edu/ncl/download.html

   For a list of other packages that support reading netCDF format see...

   http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/software.html

   (you'll also need to load the NetCDF library on your PC and the above web page can be directed to help your download/install/use NetCDF)

   Most of this is mentioned in the on-line CCM3 users guide...

   http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/ccm3/ccm3lsm_doc/ccm3_doc/UG-45.html

   1. Mar/25/1997::Changes to LSM to compare runs on two machines

      Feb/26/1997::Information on CCM3s use of Cray Pointers

      1996::How do I verify that my port of the CCM to machine X is correct?

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   Last modified: May/24/2004

   Remember CCM3 is now unsupported, use CAM for the latest Atmospheric Model for use of climate science.

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