This page borrows liberally from Gautam's excellent CLM4.5 dataset for year 1850 at ne120np4 resolution. It adds some more information on how to incorporate
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./mksurfdata.pl -res ne120np4 -d -dinlc /global/project/projectdirs/acme/inputdata -usr_mapdir /global/project/projectdirs/acme/inputdata/lnd/clm2/mappingdata/maps/ne120np4
For 1850 - 2015 low-res:
./mksurfdata.pl -res ne30np4 -years 1850,2015 -d -dinlc /global/project/projectdirs/acme/inputdata -usr_mapdir /global/project/projectdirs/acme/inputdata/lnd/clm2/mappingdata/maps/ne30np4
4. Modify namelist file if land cover information should be used
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6. Create surface dataset
./mksurfdatmksurfdata_map < namelist