[RegCNET] OFFICIAL RELEASE OF RegCM4 !!!!

[giorgi]

Dear RegCNETers

at long last, the magic time has come. With this email I want to 
officially announce the release of RegCM4 !!!!

In the notes at the end of this message you can find all information 
necessary to get and run the new code. A few considerations of relevance:

1) RegCM4 and its pre and post processors include extensive recoding,
    which should make it much cleaner and more user-friendly than RegCM3.

2) From the point of view of physics, it includes CLM, the diurnal SST
    scheme, simple se aice and a simple aerosol scheme (SO4, OC, BC,
    Dust). All other physics is like RegCM3.

3) The tropical band (TB) option is still not included in this release. We
    still need to check a few things in it, and are planning to make a new
    release including the tropical band at the end of September.

4) This code will be frozen until any new release is announced. Of course
    if we or you find any bugs, these will be promptly fixed.

5) We have the following items in the make (besides the TB option)
   5a) New UW PBL scheme
   5b) Tiedke cumulus convection scheme
   5c) Coupled ocean model (ROMs)
   5d) Coupled gas phase chemistry
   5e) Improved parallelization
We have the ambitious plan (hope?) to include all this into a new release 
at the end of 2010, but we will see how things develop and let you know.

So please go ahead and start your transition to RegCM4. Note that from 
today we will not support any more RegCM3 in any way, so you might as well 
move to the new RegCM4 era. And of course please let us know of any 
problems or comments you might have.

You may also know that we are planning to launch RegCM4 with a special 
journal issue. However, a few events beyond our control are delaying this 
process. I will give you an update on this as soon as the situation is more clear, 
but if you plan to have a paper for the special issue do not despair and 
keep working on it.

Finally, let me take this opportunity to thank all the many people who 
have contributed to the development of RegCM4. I will not try to mention 
them all for fear of missing some of them, but their work was invaluable 
for the developemnt of this new generation code which will take us into 
21st century climate modeling.

Have a good RegCM4-ing

with my very best regards,   Filippo Giorgi (on behalf of the RegCM4 team)

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RegCM-4.0 Release notes



RegCM-4.0 is a major recoding of the previous RegCM3 version.  Since RegCM3 
will no longer be supported,  we encourage all RegCM users to switch to this 
new model version.

The main new technical features of the code are summarized in the following 
points,

-Dynamic memory allocation ( this will require the code to be compiled only 
once unlike in the previous version which required recompilation after every 
modification)

-F95 programming language

-Module approach

-Unique makefile for the whole code from pre-processing to post-processing

-New post-proc available to convert the whole output to a netcdf format which 
is in better compliance with the standard netcdf format (old netcdf post-proc 
is no longer available)

-The binary file post-proc is still available and has been revised and improved 
according to the new code standards



The main new scientific features are briefly summarized in the following 
points,

-RegCM4/CLM3.5 Coupler

- A prognostic scheme for calculating the sea surface skin temperature is now 
possible to enable  if the Zeng ocean scheme is used

-SeaIce introduced in the SST boundary

-Dust/Chemistry RegCM3 packages revised and improved



Where to get the code



The new home page of the package is 
http://eforge.escience-lab.org/gf/project/regcm

Source code can be obtained via svn ( preferred method) just typing the 
following command

svn checkout https://eforge.escience-lab.org/svn/regcm/tags/RegCM-4.0

and provided that the svn software is installed on the used machine.

If svn software is not present a tar.gz file can be downloaded from

http://eforge.escience-lab.org/gf/project/regcm/frs/

The RegCM4 team strongly encourage the users to use the svn software to have 
always the possibility to be up to date and to check on-line all the news of 
the package.



Documentation:

There are a few Wiki pages available with the information on how to compile and 
use the code and the first you should check is

http://eforge.escience-lab.org/gf/project/regcm/wiki/



If you encounter any problem please report them by  using the ticketing system 
on the eforge portal

http://eforge.escience-lab.org/gf/project/regcm/tracker/

You can choose among different options and probably the most appropriate one 
for standard user are support and bugs.

Remember when you report a bug or when you ask for support  to provide as much 
as possible the information about platforms/compilers/libraries and so on,  in 
order to help people to sort out the problem faster and in a more efficient 
way.

Please take a few minutes to read 
http://eforge.escience-lab.org/gf/project/regcm  and try to submit bugs/request 
for help following such simple rules.

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# Filippo Giorgi, Head                                         #
# Earth System Physics Section                                 #
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