Upcoming Runs and Plans

An update to the file spec was posted on the MERRA WWW page this week. No major changes, but it is still a draft.

We fully expect to have the system ready for production by mid-July. As such we are gearing up for the validation runs. The reanalysis system is also being configured for the new Discover super computing system. This provides a significant performance increase. A new partition for MERRA is being prepared.

The runs will be:

Jan/Jul 2001, Pre-AIRS period where we have legacy experiments, including the GEOS4 validation

Jan-Apr and Jul-Oct 2004: We want a full annual cycle, but that will take a substantial amount of time to run. As a shortcut, we'll run two experiments that will provide the central month of the four seasons, so most focus will be on Jan, Jul then Apr, Oct. This should show any red flags that might require us to hold production. However, we plan to keep the Jan 2004 run going beyond April, as computing cycles permit, with the idea that we will get a full annual cycle (the start of production will not be held up for that to finish, but we will evaluate it nonetheless).

Jan 2006: We have been using this case for several experiments so far, and have some familiarity with it.

We have been formulating a list of comparisons and issues to consider in validation. I'll post that separately in a couple days.