3. Aerosol diagnostics
For utilizing the comparison package described below, NorESM2 should be run with extra aerosol diagnostics and output, i.e. adding history_aerosol = .true. in user_nl_cam and enabling AROFFL and AEROCOM in preprocessorDefinitions.h . For a more detailed description, please see: Aerosol diagnostics and output
3.1. AeroVal model evaluation web interface and pyaerocom tools
The AeroVal web interface is an online visualisation tool for model evaluation studies. It provides interactive visualisations of model performance including many different performance measures such as biases, correlation coefficients, RMSE, or fractional-gross-error, both on a global scale and down to analyses and visualisations of individual timeseries at the station level.
All results available in the AeroVal interface(s) are created using the pyaerocom model evaluation software, which can be considered the backbone of AeroVal. pyaerocom provides tools for data harmonisation and co-location and can handle many different data formats, for instance, model diagnostics and satellite data in AeroCom format, output from EMEP model, and support for many different observation datasets and databases such as AERONET, EBAS, EARLINET, or AirBase.
In addition to the high-level evaluation tools that are used for AeroVal, pyaerocom provides a modular and intuitive python API that can be used for more customised studies (see pyaerocom tutorials if you are interested).
3.1.1. Relevant links
AeroVal NorESM project site: https://aerocom-evaluation.met.no/main.php?project=noresm
pyaerocom website: https://pyaerocom.readthedocs.io
pyaerocom GitHub: https://github.com/metno/pyaerocom
3.2. NCL Model Version Comparison package ModIvsModII
ModIvsModII produces plots and global life-cycling data (for use in a table) of often used aerosol, cloud and radiative flux fields, including ERFs. This is done for two model versions to be compared, either CAM4-Oslo vs. CAM6-Nor or CAM6-Nor vs. CAM6-Nor (but late versions of CAM5.3-Oslo can replace CAM6-Nor), and for PD and PI conditions, i.e. 4 simulations. If only e.g. the PD simulations are available, one can replace the PI data with those in the input to ModIvsModII, as long as one keeps that in mind when interpreting the shown diagnostics. ModI and ModII can also be the same, if you need to use these diagnostics but only have one model simulation for PD or PI or both.
Make a local copy (on Linux) of the directory models/atm/cam/tools/diagnostics/ncl/ModIvsModII
Prepare climatological average monthly files of the (up to 4) simulations you want to compare, e.g. by use of the script create-clim.sh
Assuming that the simulations have been run with history_aerosol = .true. and #define AEROCOM & AEROFFL (otherwise only some of the diagnostics will be produced):
In ModIvsModII.csh (note: read the header info):
edit model info for the first model (shown to the left in the plots): modelI = CAM4-Oslo or modelI = CAM5-Oslo (or later) ?
provide paths and partial file names of the model data (PD and PI) for Model I (CAM4-Oslo or CAM5-Oslo) and Model II (must be CAM5-Oslo or later)
choose desired plot format (plotf=ps, eps, pdf or png)
Run the script: ./ModIvsModII.csh
Furthermore, to display the plots in an organized form by use of a web browser (only possible if the chosen plot format is png):
edit general model info (only) in ModIvsModII.htm, and manually cut and paste the mass budget numbers from the script output into this file (bottom part)
copy all png (plots) and htm files to the desired output (common) directory
open ModIvsModII.htm in your browser: hyper-links to all other htm files, including plots, are found here