Below is the FAMOUS list of FAQ questions and answers.
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Questions:
Answers:
A: FAMOUS is a low-resolution version of the HadCM3 climate model. It is intended to be used for projects where long periods of simulated time are needed, because it runs about ten times faster than HadCM3, which it was originally tuned to emulate. For more details, see the
About FAMOUS page
A: The UK Met. Office Unified Model
Q: What work is being done to improve FAMOUS? (^)
Q: Can FAMOUS be run in 32-bit mode (^)
A: Hadley Centre AOGCMs have always been run in 64-bit mode, although the atmosphere model alone has been run successfully in 32-bit mode, by both climateprediction.net and PRECIS. There is anecdotal evidence that the solution by the ocean model might be scientifically different in 64-bit mode. In the QUEST FAMOUS project we have not so far investigated 32-bit mode, but if anyone does, we would be interested to know about it. Selecting 64-bit mode with the compiler “doubling” options -i8 -r8 causes technical complications; gcom/MPI has to be set up very carefully to get it to work correctly, and there are difficulties optimising the 64-bit code on a native 32-bit machine (and vice versa) which could mean 30% loss of potential speed.
Q: What visualisation and analysis tools are available? (^)
A: The Met Office Hadley Centre PV-WAVE/IDL library can be
downloaded subject to (free) licence. This library was designed for analysis of PP data; see its
user guide. PP data can be converted to netCDF with
xconv and analysed using commonly available software such as IDL, Matlab and Ferret.
Q: How do I change the climate meaning periods? (^)
A: The standard FAMOUS jobs are set up to produce annual and decadal means with the UM climate meaning system. If you wish to produce monthly and seasonal means as well, you have to make various UMUI changes in both the atmos and ocean submodel separately, as follows:
- In Atmos/Ocean GCM→Control→Post Processing, Dumping and Meaning→Dumping and Meaning change the restart dump frequency to 15 days from 30 days (i.e. two per month, rather than one), archiving every 24th dump, starting at the 24th (instead of 12 and 12, so that it is still one per year). As far as we know, climate meaning period 1 must be more than one dump period.
- In the NEXT panel, change to 4 from 2 climate meaning periods. The standard jobs have period 1 as 12 dump periods (=year) and period 2 as 10 times period 1 (=decade). Change this to have period 1 as 2 dump periods (=month), period 2 as 3 (=season), period 3 as 4 (=year), period 4 as 10 (=decade). The new climate meaning periods should be set up to have PP files generated and archived.
- In Atmos/Ocean GCM→STASH→Specification of diagnostic requirements, the standard jobs have usage profiles UPMEAN and UPSYX both set to produce output at climate meaning periods 1 and 2 (annual and decadal). These need to be redefined in terms of the four meaning periods. The usual choice would be to make UPMEAN output at all four meaning periods (month, season, year, decade) and UPSYX at periods 2, 3 and 4 (that’s why it’s called SYX, as X means decade in PP mean files). Of course, you can create new usage profiles. To change a profile, select it, and then use the “Profiles” menu.