Community adoption of the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) is central to the goals of the NSF NCAR Directorate, as well as NOAA’s goal of adopting MPAS for its modeling system. The magnitude of the effort to transition, maintain and enhance a state-of-the-science modeling system such as MPAS requires a collaborative effort from multiple partners. The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) is uniquely positioned to work closely with NSF NCAR and NOAA laboratories, as well as the broader community to help build the necessary capacity to push the collective Earth system modeling community forward. Central to this work is building capacity for the DTC to conduct MPAS testing and evaluation. Initial focus is on the MPAS-Atmosphere limited area capacity. Building off of existing capabilities, the DTC is assembling and documenting a workflow for conducting experiments, including post-processing verification and plotting tools. These capabilities are available to the broader community via a GitHub repository, which is continually updated as new capabilities become available. Testing conducted by the DTC includes benchmarks covering 1-2 weeks per season for select MPAS configurations, including evaluation of lateral boundary condition development, and new Large Eddy Simulation (LES) functionality.
Sponsors: NSF NCAR, NOAA
Collaborators: NSF NCAR (MMM), NOAA (GSL), Iowa State University, National Institute for Space Research, Brazil
