CCPP SCM Version 7.0.0

The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) is pleased to announce the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP) v7.0.0 public release on September 9, 2024. This release contains the CCPP Physics, a library of physical parameterizations, the CCPP Framework, an infrastructure that connects the physics to host models, and the CCPP Single-Column Model (SCM), a simple host model that employs the CCPP Physics and CCPP Framework. Additional information and access to the code can be found here.

The CCPP Physics is envisioned to contain host-agnostic operational and developmental parameterizations for weather through seasonal prediction timescales and is connected to the Unified Forecast System (UFS) used operationally by NOAA. This release contains the following new schemes:

• Radiative Transfer for Energetics and Rapid Radiative Transfer Model for General circulation model applications - Parallel (RTE+RRTMGP) scheme
• Community Land Model (CLM) lake scheme
• Unified Gravity Wave Physics - Version 1 (UGWPv1)

Additionally, this release includes updates to a number of schemes (see details here )

Enhancements to the CCPP Framework for Version 7.0.0 include a revised handling of optional variables to provide standard optional variable functionality within the Framework, a new requirement for MPI (2008 or greater), added support for multiple CCPP instances within the same executable (or MPI task), and code improvements and bug fixes.

The CCPP SCM includes changes to run selected physics configurations in either single- or double-precision, the ability to create and run new SCM cases from standard UFS output files, additional SCM cases derived from field-campaigns (MOSAiC and COMBLE), and limited support for use with Nvidia compilers. With the functionality to create SCM cases from UFS simulations, the SCM can now be run with an active land surface or lake model. In addition to these new cases, five experimental cases are available for use with the CCPP SCM: BOMEX maritime shallow convection, LASSO continental shallow convection, ASTEX stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition, ARM SGP Summer 1997 continental deep convection, and TWP-ICE maritime deep convection.

The CCPP parameterizations are aggregated in suites by the host applications. CCPP v7.0.0 is supported for use with the CCPP SCM and includes the following supported suites: GFS_v16, WoFS_v0, HRRR_gf, GFS_v17_p8_ugwpv1, and GFS_v16_RRTMGP. Suites from previous releases are no longer supported. Physics suites included with the CCPP SCM are developmental “snapshots” and will continue to evolve  over time.

For access to the SCM and CCPP code and documentation, please visit the CCPP website at https://dtcenter.org/ccpp, where you will find a Users’ Guide, a list of known issues, frequently-asked questions, technical documentation, and scientific documentation. For information about the UFS please visit https://ufscommunity.org/. 

For questions or comments about the CCPP and the SCM, please use our Github discussions at https://github.com/NCAR/ccpp-physics/discussions. When using CCPP with the UFS, you can also direct your questions to the UFS Github discussions.

Dustin Swales, on behalf of the DTC CCPP team (Ligia Bernardet, Lulin Xue, Grant Firl, Man Zhang, Mike Kavulich, Weiwei Li, Soren Rasmussen, Tracy Hertneky, Samuel Trahan, Mike Ek, and Jimy Dudhia)