A5 Polar Mods Design Document

Owned by Tanya Reshel
Last updated: Sept 29, 2015 by Renata McCoy
4 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

Use the symbols below (copy and paste) to indicate if the section is in progress or done or not started.

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

Polar Mods to aerosol, convective transport and clouds
2.OwnerHailong Wang
3.Created 
4.Equ(tick) 
5.Ver(tick) 
6.Perf(tick) 
7.Val(tick) 
8.ApproverShaocheng Xie, Phil Rasch (pnl.gov)
9.Approved Date 
V1.0Accepted
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Table of Contents

Title: Polar Mods to aerosol, convective transport and clouds

Requirements and Design

ACME Atmosphere Group

Date:  
 

Summary


The goal of this task is to port a number of model developments, aimed at improving the representations of clouds and aerosols, from an earlier version of CAM5 to the ACME model. The modifications were done under the DOE-ESM Polar project, which have been shown to improve global aerosol distribution, aerosol deposition to snow, and cloud water at high latitudes in CAM5 (Wang et al., 2013; Qian et al., 2014; Liu et al., 2015). 

References:

Liu, X., P.-L. Ma, H. Wang, S. Tilmes, B. Singh, R.C. Easter, S.J. Ghan, and P.J. Rasch, 2015: Description and Evaluation of a New 4-Mode Version of Modal Aerosol Module (MAM4) within Version 5.3 of the Community Atmosphere Model. Submitted to Geosci. Model Dev. 
Qian Y., H. Wang, R. Zhang, M.G. Flanner, and P.J. Rasch, 2014: A sensitivity study on modeling black carbon in snow and its radiative forcing over the Arctic and Northern China. Environmental Research Letters, 9:064001.DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/9/6/064001.
Wang, H., Easter, R. C., Rasch, P. J., Wang, M., Liu, X., Ghan, S. J., Qian, Y., Yoon, J.-H., Ma, P.-L., and Vinoj, V., 2013: Sensitivity of remote aerosol distributions to representation of cloud–aerosol interactions in a global climate model, Geosci. Model Dev., 6, 765-782, doi:10.5194/gmd-6-765-2013.

 

Requirements

  1. changes to the convective transport of aerosol/gas, wet scavenging/removal, resuspension, etc.
  2. add a new aerosol module to account for the aging process of carbonaceous aerosols.
  3. add a new ice nucleation scheme that connects to aerosols 

Date last modified:  

Contributors: Hailong Wang, Richard Easter (Unlicensed), Xiaohong Liu
 

Each requirement is to be listed under a ”section” heading, as there will be a one-to-one correspondence between requirements, design, proposed imple- mentation and testing. Requirements should not discuss technical software issues, but rather focus on model capability. To the extent possible, require- ments should be relatively independent of each other, thus allowing a clean design solution, implementation and testing plan.

 

Algorithmic Formulations

 

  1. see Wang et al. (2013)
  2. see Liu et al. (2015, GMDD)

Date last modified: 


Contributors: Hailong Wang, Richard Easter (Unlicensed), Xiaohong Liu

 

For each requirement, there is a design solution that is intended to meet that requirement. Design solutions can include detailed technical discussions of PDEs, algorithms, solvers and similar, as well as technical discussion of performance issues. In general, this section should steer away from a detailed discussion of low-level software issues such as variable declarations, interfaces and sequencing.

 

Design and Implementation

  1. following Wang et al. (2013)
  2. following Liu et al. (2015)

Date last modified:  

Contributors: Hailong Wang, Balwinder Singh, Richard Easter (Unlicensed)

 

This section should detail the plan for implementing the design solution for requirement XXX. In general, this section is software-centric with a focus on software implementation. Pseudo code is appropriate in this section. Links to actual source code are appropriate. Project management items, such as svn branches, timelines and staffing are also appropriate. How do we typeset pseudo code?

 

Planned Verification and Unit Testing 

  1. will verify results against those shown by Wang et al. (2013) and Qian et al. (2014)
  2. will verify results against those shown by Liu et al. (2015)

Date last modified:   

Contributors: Hailong Wang, Balwinder Singh, Po-Lun Ma

 

How will XXX be tested? i.e. how will be we know when we have met requirement XXX. Will these unit tests be included in the ongoing going forward?

Planned Validation Testing 

  1. following Wang et al. (2013) and Qian et al. (2014) to validate results using various observational datasets 
  2. following Liu et al. (2015) to validate results using various observational datasets
  3. make plots avaiiable to the atmosphere team using the aerosol diagnostics package

Validation Testing: Hailong Wang, Balwinder Singh, Po-Lun Ma

Date last modified:
Contributors: (add your name to this list if it does not appear)

 

How will XXX be tested? What observational or other dataset will be used?  i.e. how will be we know when we have met requirement XXX. Will these unit tests be included in the ongoing going forward?

Planned Performance Testing 

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

Date last modified:
Contributors: (add your name to this list if it does not appear)

 

How will XXX be tested? i.e. how will be we know when we have met requirement XXX. Will these unit tests be included in the ongoing going forward?