Release notesRun ACCESS-ESM1.5
About
ACCESS-ESM1.5 is a fully-coupled global climate model, combining atmosphere, land, ocean, sea ice, ocean biogeochemistry and land biogeochemistry components. A description of the model and its components is available in the ACCESS-ESM1.5 overview.
The instructions below outline how to run ACCESS-ESM1.5 using ACCESS-NRI's software deployment pipeline, specifically designed to run on the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) supercomputer Gadi.
If you are unsure whether ACCESS-ESM1.5 is the right choice for your experiment, take a look at the overview of ACCESS Models.
All ACCESS-ESM1.5 configurations are open source, licensed under CC BY 4.0
and available on ACCESS-NRI GitHub.
ACCESS-ESM1.5 release notes are available on the ACCESS-Hive Forum and are updated when new releases are made available.
Prerequisites
-
Payu instructions
Before running ACCESS-ESM1.5, please get familiar with our instructions for the workflow manager, payu. In particular, make sure you follow the prerequisites instructions for payu and that you can access the payu software. -
MOSRS account
The Met Office Science Repository Service (MOSRS) is a server run by the UK Met Office (UKMO) to support collaborative development with other partners organisations. MOSRS contains the source code and configurations for some model components in ACCESS-ESM1.5 (e.g., the UM).
To apply for a MOSRS account, please contact your local institutional sponsor. -
Join NCI projects
Join the following projects by requesting membership on their respective NCI project pages:Tip
To request membership for the ki32_mosrs subproject, you need to:
- already be member of the ki32 project
- have a MOSRS account
For more information on joining specific NCI projects, refer to How to connect to a project.
Get ACCESS-ESM1.5 configuration
All released ACCESS-ESM1.5 configurations are available from the ACCESS-ESM1.5 configs GitHub repository.
Released configurations are tested and supported by ACCESS-NRI, as an adaptation of those originally developed by CSIRO and CLEX CMS.
For more information on ACCESS-ESM1.5 configurations, check ACCESS-ESM1.5 page.
More information about the available experiments and the naming scheme of the branches can also be found in the ACCESS-ESM1.5 configs GitHub repository.
Once you have chosen a configuration to start with, follow the payu instructions to source the configuration, run it and monitor the run.
Edit ACCESS-ESM1.5 configuration
Generic information about editing a payu-based configuration is available on our payu page. In this section, you can find additional information specific to ACCESS-ESM1.5. The information is organised using the same headers as on the payu page to simplify cross-referencing.
Change run length
Warning
The run length (controlled by runtime) should be left at 1 year for ACCESS-ESM1.5 experiments in order to avoid errors. Shorter simulations can be useful when setting up and debugging new experiments, however they require additional configuration changes. See the section Run for less than one year for details.
Tip
The walltime must be set to be long enough that the PBS job can complete. The model usually runs a single year in 90 minutes or less, but the walltime for a single model run is set to 2:30:00 out of an abundance of caution to make sure the model has time to run when there are occasional slower runs for unpredictable reasons. When setting runspersub > 1 the walltime doesn't need to be a simple multiple of 2:30:00 because it is highly unlikely that there will be multiple anomalously slow runs per submit.
Run for less than one year
When debugging changes to a model, it is common to reduce the run length to minimise resource consumption and return faster feedback on changes. In order to run the model for a single month, the runtime can be changed to
runtime:
years: 0
months: 1
days: 0
With the default configuration settings, the sea ice component of ACCESS-ESM1.5 will produce restart files only at the end of each year. If valid restart files are required when running shorter simulations, the sea ice model configuration should be modified so that restart files are produced at monthly frequencies. To do this, change the dumpfreq = 'y' setting to dumpfreq = 'm' in the cice_in.nml configuration file located in the ice subdirectory of the control directory.
Syncing output data to long-term storage
Warning
The ACCESS-ESM1.5 configurations include a postprocessing script which converts atmospheric outputs to NetCDF format. This script runs in a separate PBS job and prevents the output and restart files of the most recent run from being automatically synced.
After a series of runs and the final post-processing is completed, manually execute payu sync in the control directory to sync the final output and restart files.
Other configuration options
Postscripts
postscript: -v PAYU_CURRENT_OUTPUT_DIR,PROJECT -lstorage=${PBS_NCI_STORAGE} ./scripts/NetCDF-conversion/UM_conversion_job.sh
All ACCESS-ESM1.5 configurations include the NetCDF conversion postscript mentioned above. This script converts the UM's fields file format output to NetCDF in order to facilitate analysis and reduce storage requirements. By default, the conversion script will delete the fields files upon successful completion, leaving only the NetCDF output. This automatic deletion can be disabled by commenting out the --delete-ff command line flag from the conversion job submission script located in the control directory under scripts/NetCDF-conversion/UM_conversion_job.sh.
That means changing
esm1p5_convert_nc $PAYU_CURRENT_OUTPUT_DIR --delete-ff
to
esm1p5_convert_nc $PAYU_CURRENT_OUTPUT_DIR # --delete-ff
Edit a single ACCESS-ESM1.5 component configuration
Each of ACCESS-ESM1.5 components contains additional configuration options that are read in when the model component is running.
These options are typically useful to modify the physics used in the model, the input data, or the model variables saved in the output files.
These configuration options are specified in files located inside a subfolder of the control directory, named according to the submodel's name specified in the config.yaml submodels section (e.g., configuration options for the ocean component are in the ~/access-esm/preindustrial+concentrations/ocean directory).
To modify these options please refer to the User Guide of the respective model component.
Create a custom ACCESS-ESM1.5 build
All the executables needed to run ACCESS-ESM1.5 are pre-built into independent configurations using Spack.
To customise ACCESS-ESM1.5's build (for example to run ACCESS-ESM1.5 with changes in the source code of one of its component), refer to Modify and build an ACCESS model's source code.
Controlling model output
Selecting the variables to save from a simulation can be a balance between enabling future analysis and minimising storage requirements. The choice and frequency of variables saved by each model can be configured from within each submodel's control directory.
Each submodel's control directory contains detailed and standard presets for controlling the output, located in the diagnostic_profiles subdirectories (e.g. ~/access-esm/preindustrial+concentrations/ice/diagnostic_profiles for the sea ice submodel). The detailed profiles request a large number of variables at higher frequencies, while the standard profiles restrict the output to variables more regularly used across the community. Details on the variables saved by each preset are available in this Hive Forum topic.
Selecting a preset output profile to use in a simulation can be done by pointing the following symbolic links to the desired profile:
STASHCin the atmosphere control directory.diag_tablein the ocean control directory.ice_history.nmlin the ice control directory.
For example, to select the detailed output profile for the atmosphere:
Get Help
If you have questions or need help regarding ACCESS-ESM1.5, consider creating a topic in the Earth System Model category of the ACCESS-Hive Forum.
For assistance on how to request help from ACCESS-NRI, follow the guidelines on how to get help.