July 21, 2010 - NCAR Day Two

After a struggle to get up to campus on my bike (not a story for now), I'm reading through the WRF manual to get a better idea for the flow of WPS --> WRF. I have a few things that I'll need to learn:

1. What are nested domains, and why are they useful?
2. Where do I get the GRIB meteorological data for ungrib.exe? Will I be able to use CCSM climate data? And if so, how will I get it into the right format?
3. I need to get familiar with the namelist variables, and the particulars of their differences. Should I just run several of the examples to get familiar?

So far (I need to keep track of these things), I've downloaded, gunzipped, detarred, and configured and compiled WRF and WPS. They are in /blhome/bsteiner/WRFdir. I have configured WRF/Chem, and it is compiling now. It was placed in the ~/WRFdir/WRFV3/ directory.

Alright, now I'm compiling WRF/Chem...which is taking 2 - 3 hours, which Alma (downstairs) has informed me is normal. I'm also taking off to see a presentation by Wallace Broecker, the man who coined the phrase "global warming." It was interesting.

July 20, 2010 - NCAR/UCAR First Day - End of Day - Late Night

It's 10:30 and I got a real case of WRF to run.

What I had neglected to do before was configure and compile both WRF and WPS first, then go through the geogrid, ungrib, metgrid, real, and wrf chain.

Steps to run a real case:

1. configure WRF
2. compile WRF
3. configure WPS
4. compile WPS
5. run geogrid.exe
6. run ungrib.exe
7. run metgrid.exe
8. run real.exe
9. run wrf.exe

Note: I believe that steps 5 and 6 can switch orders...they both feed into metgrid.exe, and so can be changed and altered willy-nilly.

What I need to learn:

How do I change parts of WRF/WPS after I have a run set-up?
What is the equivalent of case names? How do I differentiate between runs?
Do I need a new WRF/WPS directory every time?

Goal for tomorrow: full run of WRF-CHEM

July 20, 2010 - NCAR/UCAR First Day - End of Day

Well, I'm fairly frustrated.

I was not able to get WRF running with a real case...for some reason I could not find real.exe and wrf.exe after all of the steps of setting up and checking WPS. I'm trying to start again, but the compile is taking forever and I do now know why. Also, the wireless keeps dumping me every half-hour or so, and that's freaking annoying.

I feel like I should wipe WRF clean and start again...but I really don't want to do that.

I also am not having any luck finding a place for next week...although I still have several days. And there are no blue bikes available here at NCAR, so I'll need to try and see if I can get a used one that I can sell back at the end of my time here. I do not want to rent a bike for two weeks.

Tonight I am going to read up on WRF-CHM (at 86 page manual) and see if I can get that into my brain. No promises, though. Oy.

July 20, 2010 - NCAR/UCAR First Day

This is my first official day of 13 here at the Foothills Lab in Boulder, Colorado.

I've met with Peter and have planned some of this trip, and the future of my research. I want to get these down so I don't forget.

Specific Tasks while I am here:

1. Get familiar with WRF / WRF-CHEM
First, run the WRF idealized cases.
Second, run the WRF real cases.
Third, run WRF-CHEM and any examples that it has.
Read the manual for WRF-CHEM
Get familiar with the basics of WRF from it's large user's manual
Also read the new CESM documentation!

2. Work on my paper
Meet with Peter in the next few days about the intro/background/methods portion of my paper
Get a figure or two with seasonal composites of the low systems, or of a correlation graph of low pressure systems and high ozone concentrations behind the low front (both as anomalies, i.e. have the background taken out). Or, if I can, create a correlation figure (i.e. PS'O3'(bar) )

3. Plan next semesterShould I take Max Zhang's class?
What are my specific research goals for the semester?

4. Figure out who I want on my committee
Organize and send Peter the people I've been referred to and their correspondences.
Explicitly write my goal of a third policy/public committee member.

5. Get a general outline of this next project
Re-Read the proposal
Read the data quality thing Peter sent out
Flesh-out an outline for the two to three possible papers, and where their twist is:

1. Compare NCEP reanalysis with CESM-CAM a current-day run
2. Compare Kieran's current day emissions for the current day to observations and/or model results for current day (see 1)
3. Determine how, who, what, and why we need model downscaling (e.g. CCSM to WRF) and how to do it...this is my research!

What is this?

This is basically a digital log of my research. This is not for public reading...this is just for me to dump my thoughts and maintain a daily log of the research I do.