A4 UNICON Design Document

Owned by Tanya Reshel
Last updated: May 29, 2019 by Renata McCoy
3 min read

The Design Document page provides a description of the algorithms, implementation and planned testing including unit, verification, validation and performance testing. Please read  Step 1.3 Performance Expectations that explains feature documentation requirements from the performance group point of view.

Design Document

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The first table in Design Document gives overview of this document, from this info the Design Documents Overview page is automatically created.

In the table below, 4.Equ means Equations and Algorithms, 5.Ver means Verification, 6.Perf - Performance, 7. Val - Validation

  • Equations: Document the equations that are being solved and describe algorithms
  • Verification Plans: Define tests that will be run to show that implementation is correct and robust. Involve unit tests to cover range of inputs as well as benchmarks.
  • Performance expectations: Explain the expected performance impact from this development
  • Validation Plans: Document what process-based, stand-alone component, and coupled model runs will be performed, and with what metrics will be used to assess validity

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In the table below, 4.Equ means Equations and Algorithms, 5.Ver means Verification, 6.Perf - Performance, 7. Val - Validation,   (tick) - completed, (warning) - in progress, (error) - not done



Overview table for the owner and an approver of this feature

1.Description

UNICON convection
2.Owner
Jin-Ho Yoon (Unlicensed)
3.Created
 
4.Equ(tick)
5.Ver(tick)
6.Perf(tick)
7.Val(tick)
8.Approver
Shaocheng Xie
9.Approved Date
 
V1.0Declined
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Table of Contents

Title: UNICON convection

Requirements and Design

ACME Atmosphere Group
 Group

Date:  

Summary

The goal of this task to implement and evaluate a new convective parameterization scheme - UNified CONvection scheme by Sungsu Park (Deactivated) at NCAR in ACME. There are noticeable improvements using UNICON in terms of mean climate, climate variabilities including Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO) and diurnal cycle of precipitation, and so on. We want to implement this new scheme into the ACME master and do series of evaluations. 

Requirements

Requirement 1: Fast track implementation and evaluation were done successfully.  We found a couple of implementation errors and fixed.  Also, we found an issue with new tracers in UNICON and SE dycore.  A fix was implemented. 

Date last modified:  

Contributors: Jin-Ho Yoon (Unlicensed), Sungsu Park (Deactivated), Hailong Wang, Po-Lun Ma, Mark Taylor, Phil Rasch (pnl.gov)


Requirement 2: Slow track implementation is discussed. 

Date last modified:  

Contributors: Jin-Ho Yoon (Unlicensed), Sungsu Park (Deactivated), Hailong Wang, Po-Lun Ma, Shaocheng Xie, Wuyin Lin, Balwinder Singh, Phil Rasch (pnl.gov)


Requirement 3: Slow track implementation. 

Date last modified:  

Contributors: Jin-Ho Yoon (Unlicensed), Sungsu Park (Deactivated), Hailong Wang, Po-Lun Ma, Shaocheng Xie, Wuyin Lin, Balwinder Singh, Phil Rasch (pnl.gov)




Algorithmic Formulations

Design solution: UNICON design is well documented in Sungsu Park (Deactivated)'s papers.

Date last modified: 

Contributors: Jin-Ho Yoon (Unlicensed), Sungsu Park (Deactivated)




Design and Implementation

Implementation: Fast track implementation

Date last modified:  

Contributors: Jin-Ho Yoon (Unlicensed)


Implementation: Slow track implementation

Date last modified:  

Contributors: Jin-Ho Yoon (Unlicensed)


Planned Verification and Unit Testing 

  1. Verify against UNICON's implementation in CESM1 code base and its behavior. 

  2. Verify/Test its compatibility with Polar mods  

Date last modified:   
Contributors: Jin-Ho Yoon (Unlicensed), Hailong Wang, Po-Lun Ma, 



Planned Validation Testing 

Validation Testing: short-desciption-of-testing-here

Date last modified:  
Contributors: Jin-Ho Yoon (Unlicensed), Sungsu Park (Deactivated), Phil Rasch (pnl.gov), Mark Taylor, Hailong Wang, Po-Lun Ma, Hui Wan, Kai Zhang 


The initial implementation has been tested for without considering B4B capability with default ACME, because we are taking a fast track approach for quick evaluation. However, we know how to maintain B4B with default ACME.  On the other hand, we rigorously tested for consistencies with NCAR simulation in terms of FV and SE dycores.  An earlier issue in SE dycore has been fixed.  10 year fixed SST simulation has been done for UNICON in CESM1 branch with FV dycore (used as a guideline), UNICON in ACME with FV dycore, and UNICON in ACME with SE dycore to ensure all the features are preserved.  

Planned Performance Testing 

Performance Testing: short-desciption-of-testing-here

Date last modified:  
Contributors:  Jin-Ho Yoon (Unlicensed), Phil Rasch (pnl.gov), Po-Lun Ma, Hailong Wang, Balwinder Singh

Early results show that UNICON improves simulations of the mean climate, tropical variability, diurnal precipitation, and cloud properties.  An early test with UNICON on high vertical resolution shows much less sensitivity, meaning good scale adaptivity and easier tuning.  UNICON costs extra 40-50%.  We'll work with the performance team to evaluate/improve performance.