clairecarouge
(Claire Carouge, ACCESS-NRI Land Modelling Team Lead)
1
Date: 21 January 2025
Attendees:
Agenda:
Meeting schedule
The meetings keep the same schedule as last year, on the first and third Tuesdays of the month. You can find .ics files in the Announcement topic to add the meetings to your calendar.
There is a problem with daylight saving time in some calendars with the meetings appearing to change time. We will warn people closer to the date.
Co-chairs
We had one volunteer to become a co-chair.
Waiting on the SAC meeting on February 13th to get approval before moving forward.
We still accept further applications.
Configurations for CABLE and JULES and CABLE pre-processor
Summary of work so far:
Mat’s workflow with ANTS for JULES ancillaries outside of ANTS framework.
Abhaas working on a met forcing pre-processing tool to format various datasets to a common format for CABLE to use.
Soil type discussion:
Update the source of the soil types
Dominant vs area-weighted method: we prefer to use the area-weighted method. Analysis from Siyuan shows the results are weird over dry regions.
Use the same ancillary sources as what the Bureau is using for JULES. The Bureau is using the default methods and datasets from the Met Office for other ancillaries except for land cover and LAI climatology.
Soil parameters
JULES read in the soil properties, not the soil types. Soil properties are an output from ANTS.
CABLE can calculate the parameters internally but we can also give the distribution of the parameters. Better to converge on a single way to handle it, putting it all in the pre-processing step.
JULES and CABLE don’t have the same soil parameters. ANTS will give us most of what we need for CABLE but not all. Units and sign conventions might not be the same as well, we will need to check carefully. We can modify the ANTS app to obtain what we need for CABLE.
We can check against Mengyuan’s Australia-wide gridinfo file and BIOS gridinfo.
Datasets: proposing the Gridded Soil Atlas.
The ground water scheme needs additional parameters to add. They are derived from the elevation so should be easy to obtain.
Initial conditions in CABLE gridinfo:
Should we keep the initial conditions as part of gridinfo? It might be best to split them from the constant parameters.
With a spin-up, the ICs only need to be reasonable and don’t need to be completely consistent with each other. For the slower parts of the model, it is worth thinking carefully about the initialisation.
We don’t want to use the restart file format for the initial conditions because the restart format is a 1D vector.
Question of priority of tasks and goal of this work considering coupled and NextGen JULES current work. But NextGen JULES could be several years away and we might need something before that.
One goal for this work is to have a standard way to create inputs for CABLE offline and the regional model. Ideally, it can work within the regional nesting suite.
Met forcing pre-processor for CABLE
Discussion around the weather generator. It has been decided that the weather generator should be done outside of CABLE because that’s the only way to properly compare CABLE and JULES. It is also more flexible.
CalLMIP discussion
Ian put the question of whether we should get involved with CalLMIP now.
There is some interest around parameter calibration but we can’t see any capacity to engage at this stage. We could engage in the webinar in fall 2025 (northern hemisphere).
Sensitivity to root distribution
Test with Haverd2013 fwsoil does not help with the issue reported last year.
Actions:
List of what datasets are currently used in the ANTS workflow
Check what ANTS produces compared to what CABLE needs, Mat and Lachlan
Non-netcdf data:
We should expect non-netcdf datasets. We need to support these as long as the formats are common between several datasets. We don’t need to have one tool to do it all but there needs to be a way to support these. The licensing considerations will also decide whether some datasets are possible to support or not.
Output format:
Some run scripts are to use 1 var. per year per file, other scripts have everything together. Preference for 1 file per variable per year. Especially because the met forcings will get bigger with going to higher resolution.
Interpolation of met forcings:
Start without interpolation or clipping in longitude and latitude. Clipping might be the most useful to have to design regional simulations.
Treatment on veg and soil information in met forcing:
Keep the functionality for now. There are questions about whether it is easier this way when the information comes from the same source or to separate the information in all cases.
clairecarouge
(Claire Carouge, ACCESS-NRI Land Modelling Team Lead)
4
Date: 04/03/2025 Attendees: 9
1. Meeting Time Change Proposal
Claire Carouge proposed changing the meeting time to 2-3 PM.
No objections were raised.
Claire will contact the land working group to confirm the change.
2. Working Group Resources
Claire Carouge discussed the ESM working group’s need for resources.
Current usage rate indicates underutilization.
No new experiments or increased utilization expected from attendees.
Claire will inform the ESM working group about the availability of resources.
3. Admin Item: Mailing List Change
Claire Carouge proposed changing the mailing list to the ACCESS-Hive forum due to spam filter issues.
Written instructions will be sent out.
Rachel Law and Claire Carouge discussed the transition and agreed on the change.
4. LIAISE Project Participation
Matt Lipson introduced the LIAISE Project, an intercomparison study over the Pyrenees, Southern France, and Northern Spain.
The project aims to test hydrological dynamics and other land processes at kilometer scales.
The project requires at least three high-resolution simulations using different forcings, with a spin-up period from 1990 to 2013.
Evaluation will include catchment-level discharge observations, LST anomaly analysis, and possibly flux tower analysis.
Discussion Points:
Claire Carouge and Matt Lipson discussed the feasibility of participation given the tight timeline and resource constraints.
Rachel Law noted the potential interest for high-resolution modeling but highlighted the challenges in preparing forcings and resources.
Lachlan Whyborn mentioned the relevance to the Aus2200 project and the potential to leverage processes developed for that.
Consensus: To keep track of the project and consider participation in the future if resources and time allow.
5. Regional Nesting Suite Update
Matt Lipson provided an update on the regional nesting suite using ERA 5 and BARRA-R2 for initialisation.
Key Points:
The suite allows running high-resolution regional models with varying sea surface temperatures for long simulations.
Initial conditions can be set using ERA5 land or BARRA-R2, with differences in soil moisture and temperature observed.
Findings:
Soil moisture differences between ERA5 land and BARRA-R2 persist throughout the month-long simulation.
Temperature differences are smaller than expected, with a peak difference of about 0.5°C.
The suite captures large weather systems well, but some smaller events are missed.
Discussion:
Claire Carouge raised questions about the differences in soil moisture initialisation.
Rachel Law suggested using atmospheric fields from BARRA and running cable offline for initialisation.
Anna Ukkola emphasised the need to normalise soil moisture by water holding capacity for accurate comparisons.
Next Steps: Further analysis on the impact of different land cover products and more localised analysis on areas with significant soil moisture differences.
6. Urban Implementation in ACCESS
Jiachen Lu gave a brief update on the urban implementation in ACCESS.
Plan to use the UCLEM urban model and provide more updates in the next meeting.
7. Acknowledgment
Rachel Law thanked Anna Ukkola for her time as co-chair.
Anna Ukkola expressed her gratitude and mentioned her upcoming parental leave.
clairecarouge
(Claire Carouge, ACCESS-NRI Land Modelling Team Lead)
5
Date: 18/03/2025 Attendees: 7
1. Training poll
The poll for training offerings at the ACCESS-NRI workshop was presented.
It is not possible for ACCESS-NRI to propose training on everything proposed, it is thus important for people to vote for the topics they would like to attend so the training program can be tailored to people’s needs.
We took a few minutes for attendees to vote for their trainings of interest.
2. Land annual workshop and ACCESS-NRI workshop
The ACCESS-NRI workshop will take place from 8-12 September in Melbourne. The schedule for the week is:
Monday: COSIMA Hackathon, Board meeting
Tuesday: training:
Wednesday and Thursday: Workshop day
Friday: Community working group workshops
During the main workshop, there will be sessions co-organised by the working groups on topics of interest to multiple working groups.
Mat, who sits on the ACCESS-NRI workshop program committee, has shared the current list of proposed topics and asked for some feedback on what would benefit the land community most. Topics of interest that came up:
high-latitudes: current projects tend to focus on ice-ocean connections and forget the implications for the land.
km-scale focus: there is an obvious interest from the 21st Century Weather. Here again, the readiness of ACCESS and the land for such studies was put in question, as well as the apparent lack of awareness of this issue by other communities.
carbon cycle.
There was also a discussion on the focus of the ACCESS-NRI workshop. There was a consensus we do not need a duplicate of AMOS. This workshop should differentiate itself by weaving together the scientific questions and the technical aspects, based on ACCESS-NRI models and tools, of solving these questions.
Land annual workshop
Previous workshops were valuable to the land community. Last year’s working bee has been well received.
It is clear we will want to organise something on Friday, the 12th with maybe an option for Monday, the 8th. A larger group is needed to reach a further decision.
Next meeting
Next meeting is on 1st April, at 2pm. Reminder the time of the fortnightly meetings is now 2-3pm.
clairecarouge
(Claire Carouge, ACCESS-NRI Land Modelling Team Lead)
6
Date: 01/04/2025 Attendees: 9
1. Presentation Jiachen Lu
Introduction of UCLEM in AM3. It is now technically working: it compiles and runs without errors. Two new files needed uclem_*. Called from cable_cbm, only update the prognostics variables from the implicit call.
It is now running idealised parameters. Need to work on reading in inputs and parameters.
CABLE only gives one layer forcing to UCLEM so we can’t differentiate height/wind/temperature and mixing ratio for roof and road. We are also missing the V component of the wind.
Plans are to introduce uclem ancillaries, runtime control options and updates to the STASH for outputs.
Discussion on the impact of the wind direction on the results considering the dataset availability on the building’s orientation. New datasets are now available.
Note about the calling sequence of CABLE in the UM and the update of the prognostics. CABLE is called twice from the implicit branch, so updating the prognostics might be more tricky than currently implemented.
Continued in-depth discussion about the next steps for the UCLEM implementation in AM3.
2. Workshop preparations
Mat, Lachlan and Jiachen volunteered to help prepare the workshop.
clairecarouge
(Claire Carouge, ACCESS-NRI Land Modelling Team Lead)
7
Date: 15th April 2025 Attendees: 8
1. Land Working Group Workshop
Update by Lachlan Whyborn:
Alex Norton added to the workshop committee to represent CSIRO’s interests.
Lachlan enquired about a theme and proposed “High resolution and Australia-specific ancillaries for land surface modeling.” based on last year’s workshop.
It might be best to broaden it to include processes.
We also need more clarity on the plans for the workshop: presentations, hackathon, discussions?
Claire emphasised we need to finalise a short description for registration purposes by May 5th.
Action Items:
Lachan to post on the Forum to gather feedback and initiate discussion.
2. Mailing List Transition
Update by Claire Carouge:
Information about changing the mailing list to the Forum has been sent.
Encouraged everyone to join the new mailing list.
There is already a good uptake. Plan to disable the old mailing list by the end of the week.
Action Items:
Contact Claire if anyone has trouble joining the new mailing list.
3. Ancillary Suite for Cable
Presentation by Lachlan Whyborn and Mathew Lipson:
Goals:
Develop an ancillary suite generator for both Jules and Cable at arbitrary resolutions.
Facilitate model intercomparisons and high-resolution ancillaries.
Current Status:
Spreadsheet detailing required ancillaries for Jules and Cable.
Mapping matrix between CCI land cover types and Cable land cover types created by Mathew Lipson.
First set of vegetation maps for CABLE have been produced at various resolutions using a first guess for the mapping.
Discussion of dominant vs per PFT land fractions and LAI. It was decided we need to support all the cases. There is still the question whether the option to choose the number of vegetation patches per grid cell should happen in the ancillary suite or in CABLE. Differences between Jules and Cable ancillaries, such as land cover fractions, LAI, and soil thermal capacity.
Question about using soil thermal capacity or the specific heat capacity and the soil density. Ian notes CABLE is always using the specific heat capacity and soil density together to create the soil thermal capacity. There is just one exception in the code that is for a very specific case which we might be able to remove. It might be ok for the moment to store the soil thermal capacity in the specific heat capacity and change the soil density to 1.
Input from the community is needed to create a mapping matrix between CCI and Cable.
Ian says a first step would be to compare the CCI-based maps currently produced with the maps used by CABLE in existing gridinfo file or ancillary file for ACCESS.
It was noted CABLE and JULES do not process sparse vegetation in the same way. JULES tends to add more bare soil than is needed for CABLE.
Action Items:
Lachlan to create maps for visual comparison.
Further discussion on the mapping matrix and handling of fractional vs. dominant vegetation types.
4. Moving the CABLE repository
There was no time to discuss this topic.
Action Item: Claire will send more information via the mailing list.
5. Project Allocation Usage
Update by Claire Carouge:
Access NRI has used 40% of its allocation for the quarter.
Discussion on future usage of the WG project allocation.