CCPP SCM Version 8.0.0

The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) is pleased to announce the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP) Single-Column Model (SCM) v8.0.0 public release on September 28, 2026. This release includes updates to the CCPP 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 SCM includes the following updates:

CCPP Framework new capabilities:

• Flipping of arrays, e.g. for cases in which the physics is oriented bottom to top and the host model top to bottom.
• Kind transformations e.g., double to single precision, creating flexibility in connections between host and physics.
• Superior memory management: suite-owned variables do not need to be allocated by the host model.
• Introspection. Capgen provides a data file containing all necessary scheme and host files, required dependencies, and all variable lists needed by host-model. This can be used directly by the build-system, or for debugging purposes.
• Integer state machine. Allows physics working precision to be build-time configurable. Currently this is hardcoded and included as part of the CCPP Physics library. 
• Registered scalar-index dimensions for threading and ensembles. This allows for host configurability for multi-threaded and multi-instance implementations.
• Write-if-changed build integration. Facilitates quicker model build time and debugging.
• Enhanced error-checking: a Fortran-vs-metadata validator tool identifies inconsistencies and prompts the developer to address it at build-time. 
• Handling of constituents array for the flexible management of atmospheric tracers (like moisture, aerosols, or chemical species).
• Ease of code inspection, since the code does not involve a static driver with conditional statements.
• Improved computational performance.

CCPP Physics: 

• Newer code base for the parameterizations and suites supported in CCPP v7

CCPP SCM:

• SCM code cleanup: Removed unsupported code and eliminated nonfunctional or unimplemented components.
• New SCM Case: Atlantic Tradewind Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC) for January/February 2020 marine shallow convection. The ATOMIC test case consists of seven 33-hour periods.

Updated technical documentation

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://ufs.epic.noaa.gov/.
 

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.

We would like to acknowledge the scientific community for their valuable contributions, which informed several of the improvements in this release. 

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