Runs

The [runs] section of a configuration file contains options used to name the “main” run, a preprocessed E3SM v0 run (if any) and to point to analysis of a reference E3SM v1 or standalone MPAS run (if any):

[runs]
## options related to the run to be analyzed and reference runs to be
## compared against

# mainRunName is a name that identifies the simulation being analyzed.
mainRunName = runName

# preprocessedReferenceRunName is the name of a reference run that has been
# preprocessed to compare against (or None to turn off comparison).  Reference
# runs of this type would have preprocessed results because they were not
# performed with MPAS components (so they cannot be easily ingested by
# MPAS-Analysis)
preprocessedReferenceRunName = None

# config file for a reference run to which this run will be compared.  The
# analysis should have already been run to completion once with this config
# file, so that the relevant MPAS climatologies already exist and have been
# remapped to the comparison grid.  Leave this option commented out if no
# reference run is desired.
# referenceRunConfigFile = /path/to/config/file

The name of the “main” run (as opposed to a reference run, if any) can be any identifier that will be used in figure titles, legends, web pages and file names to identify this run. It does not need to be the name of the simulation as specified in E3SM:

mainRunName = runName

A few of the time series plots in MPAS-Analysis can be compared against a preprocessed reference run from E3SM v0 (which was similar to the CESM, the Community Earth System Model). If these data are available and the comparison to these runs is desired, the name of the reference run should be specified here and the paths to the data set should be specified (see Preprocessed Reference Runs). If not this name should be left as None:

preprocessedReferenceRunName = None

MPAS-Analysis supports comparison between the “main” run and a reference run from either E3SM or a standalone MPAS component. By default, this feature is disabled by commenting out the configuration option:

# referenceRunConfigFile = /path/to/config/file

To specify a reference run, first run MPAS analysis on the reference run. Be sure that:

  • the start and endy year for climatologies is covered by the simulation output.
  • most configuration options for the reference run are the same as for the main run. The exceptions are contents of the [run], [input] and [output] sections. The range of years for climatologies can be different, but this is discouraged.

Once the analysis has been run on the reference run, a comparison is made by uncommenting referenceRunConfigFile and specifying the path to the configuration file use in this analysis, e.g.:

referenceRunConfigFile = config.reference_run