Since I get many questions on what's contained in FOAM output, here's a list of all the variables contained in the standard atmosphere, coupler, and ocean output files.

As I continue to run a range of climate models, I've learned from painful lessons that I need to record as much information about the model run as possible. When I first started this process, I simply kept files used to make the run (the geography and configuration files for the model) and the model output. At first, this seemed sufficient because, in the end, these were the data that were most important. As it turns out, however, that having a history of everything you did during the model run, such as adjustments to the settings or geography, is also important both historically to the run and possibly sorting out problems later.

Snow Leopard, the latest OS offering from Apple, promised to be both 64-bit and faster. The question is whether Apple delivered those promises and whether those improvements impact modeling.

First, I got Snow Leopard booting to the 64-bit Snow Leopard kernal. There are instructions how to do this out there on the web (note that you don't have to bother if your machine is 64-Bit and you're running the server version).

More info below the fold..

Running a coupled climate model takes a LONG time. Frequently, modelers don't use a full ocean model to save on time and CPU usage. However, when an ocean model is used, it is sometimes helpful to stop the fully coupled model and run the ocean by itself for some time. This helps spin up the ocean without using as much CPU time. This video is how to do it for paleo cases in FOAM.

As part of the ongoing efforts to make simulations run by PaleoTerra more useful, we are updating the site to list all climate models run by PaleoTerra and to start making the climate model reports, images, and animations available online to clients.

Here is a quick video on what's new with the PaleoTerra climate model report. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

I recently upgraded my PGI compiler to version 8, and I had tons of trouble getting the climate model to compile and run. In this case, I decided to switch from mpich 1.2.7 to OpenMPI, on the hopes it would be better for the system and easier to set up.

However, nothing linked properly. If the software compiled, then it would have tons of MPI related errors. As a rule, I install all the libraries needed to run the model in the /opt directory, since it's easier to have more than one version of various libraries (different versions, different compilers, 32 vs 64 bit, etc), so I didn't think there could be a conflict in the libraries.

When not using a scheduler like Torque/PBS, it can be complicated to find out whether the model has quit. If the run was successful, you can have a reasonable idea when it SHOULD quit, but it might crash long before that time. As a result, you've lost hours, if not days, of computing time.

Computer clusters can be expensive to buy and expensive to maintain. My current linux cluster has 18 CPUs, and takes up about 13U of rack space in a colocation facility, and uses 17-18 amps of power.