Meeting Minutes (19/08/2025)
Present: @clairecarouge, @spencerwong, @manodeep, @paulleopardi, @dougiesquire, @RachelLaw, @harshula, @jemmajeffree, @Aidan, @MartinDix, @rbeucher, @inh599, @anton, @pearseb, @sofarrell, @dhb599, @alexnorton
Chair: @clairecarouge
Minutes: @spencerwong
New experiment runner
As @Jhan will be on leave for a couple of weeks, it was decided to try and find someone to cover as the experiment runner, especially in light of the recent random crashes. @tiloz, @clairecarouge, and @RachelLaw will discuss further to find someone.
Wombat crashes
Random wombat crashes have been occurring at the start of simulations. @pearseb has looked into it. The crashes always occur at a particular routine, though there’s no indications of problems in the MOM restart data.
@MartinDix suggests that there could be something not being read correctly, and @manodeep mentions that there could be a race condition. @dhb599 has also had this error during test runs. Usually it resolves upon restarting, however in one case, restarting repeatedly reproduces the error. @dougiesquire will investigate more over the next few days. @spencerwong will test whether oneAPI has any effect.
Australian PFTs
@RachelLaw and @alexnorton are running several AMIP runs to test different parameterisations for the Australian PFTs. So far, these do not appear to cause major differences, and the changes in carbon fluxes are within the range of variability. More tests are being run to make sure that various metrics look sensible. LUC is also working.
Ocean temperature drift
@tiloz mentions that the priority should be on understanding the ocean temperature drift before bringing in further configuration changes, especially as the drift has increased when changing to CICE5.
@MartinDix is testing ocean albedo changes, and has done additional tests with the AprilSpinup configuration. Using the AprilSpinup configuration but removing the solar constant change results in a short drop in ocean temperature, but does not show any large long term drift.
@spencerwong will look into the proposed water balance changes. They will alter the global runoff, and hence will likely impact the iceberg melt.
Infrastructure changes
@Aidan notes that there are infrastructure changes ready to be made to the ESM1.6 model deployment repository, however it makes sense to wait until development is less active to make these changes, as they will require rebasing each open PR. We should let @Aidan know when it’s a good time to make these changes.