Welcome to the CLM Tutorial
This repository includes materials designed to be an introduction to running the Community Land Model (CLM), the terrestrial component of CESM. The materials were developed to support the CLM tutorial and serve as reference documentation for all CLM users.
In 1983 NCAR created the Community Climate Model (CCM) as a freely available global atmosphere model for use by the climate research community. The scope of CCM development continued to expand and in 1994 NCAR scientists released the Climate System Model (CSM), a global model that included component models for the atmosphere, land surface, ocean, and sea-ice, communicating through a central coupler component. This was later renamed the Community Climate System Model (CCSM).
The early development of the Community Land Model can be described as the merging of a community-developed land model focusing on biogeophysics and a concurrent effort at NCAR to expand the NCAR Land Surface Model (NCAR LSM, Bonan 1996) to include the carbon cycle, vegetation dynamics, and river routing. The concept of a community-developed land component of the Community Climate System Model (CCSM) was initially proposed at the CCSM Land Model Working Group (LMWG) meeting in February 1996. Initial software specifications and development focused on evaluating the best features of three existing land models:
- NCAR LSM (Bonan 1996, 1998) used in the Community Climate Model (CCM3) and the initial version of CCSM; the
- Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences land model (IAP94) (Dai and Zeng 1997); and the
- Biosphere-Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS) (Dickinson et al. 1993) used with CCM2.
More information on the history of CLM development is available in the overview section of the CLM technical documentation
The overarching goal of the tutorial is to introduce the science and practice of using CLM as a research tool. Lecture and practicals aim to link science and code by highlighting model assumptions and hypotheses.
As a result of attending the CLM Tutorial, attendees will:
- Gain a foundational scientific understanding of CLM and its features.
- Be able to run and modify the model and use the output.
- Have opportunities to network with peers and CLM scientists.
- Attain an understanding of High Performance Computing (HPC) needed for CLM.
- Perceive the tutorials to be an inclusive learning environment.
The materials are primarily based on CLM6 concepts and workflows, although many of the principles apply to other versions of CLM as well.
The CLM tutorials were started in 2014 and is typically offered as an in-person workshop. If you are interested in attending the tutorial, please see the CESM events webpage for the most up to date information about when the tutorial will next be offered in Boulder, Colorado and the timeline for applying.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which is a major facility sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Cooperative Agreement No. 1852977. Staff time on this project was also supported by the Climate and Global Dynamics (CGD) laboratory.
Additional support for staff time to develop the materials presented here came from the following National Science Foundation Grants: 2019625, 2224439, 2320667, 2406778, 2409246, & 2515537
Materials here were heavily borrowed from the CESM tutorial. A number of people have been critical to this effort, including:
- Cecile Hannay, Alice DuVivier, David Bailey, Peter Lawrence, Hui Li, Sophia Macarewich, Jesse Nusbaumer, Adam Phillips, Kate Thayer-Calder, and William Xu who serve on the CESM tutorial committee and put together the tutorial materials.
- Brian Dobbins, Gunter Leguy, and Gustavo Marques, who helped test materials and have contributed substantially.
- Elizabeth Faircloth, who supports the CESM program administratively and without whom everything would probably fall apart.
- David Lawrence, who supported this effort as CESM chief scientist.
Specific modification and development for the CLM tutorial were made by:
- Will Wieder, Adrianna Foster, Linnia Hawkins, Sam Levis, Erik Kluzek, Sean Swenson, Katie Dagon, Samar Minallah, Danniel Kennedy, Sam Rabin, and Keith Oleson.