GEOS-Chem Newsletter September 2010

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Dear GEOS-Chem Users,

Here is your September GEOS-Chem Newsletter.

Thank you for your continued support of GEOS-Chem. Happy Equinox!

Bob Yantosca and Claire Carouge
geos-chem-support@as.harvard.edu

News from the GEOS-Chem Steering Committee

Previous meeting

The last GEOS-Chem Steering Committee telecon took place on June 29, 2010. We invite you to read the meeting documents listed below:

  1. September 29th Steering Committee Meeting Minutes

Next meeting

The next GEOS-Chem Steering Committee date is TBD (possibly January 4th). We will confirm the date shortly.

If you would like to bring any items to the attention of the Steering Committee before the next telecon, please contact your Working Group Chairperson(s).

GEOS-Chem developer credit

The GEOS-Chem Developer Credit and GEOS-Chem Code Development History web pages have been updated to reflect the latest information from the release of GEOS-Chem v8-03-01. Please visit these pages at your convenience.

Development of the GEOS–Chem model and its adjoint is a grass-roots activity by individual scientists pursuing their own research interests and sharing their work for the benefit of all. Good functioning of the GEOS–Chem community and faster sharing of new model features is promoted by users offering co-authorship for recent developments.

News from the GEOS-Chem Working Groups

Sources and Sinks Working Group

The Emissions Working Group has been renamed to the Sources and Sinks Working Group. This group will be co-chaired by Randall Martin (Dalhousie U.) and Paul Palmer (U. Edinburgh). Please welcome Paul to the GEOS-Chem Steering Committee!

The Sources and Sinks Working Group will address issues pertaining to emissions as well as fluxes to/from the atmosphere (including wet and dry deposition).

Working Groups Overview

We encourage each GEOS-Chem user to join the GEOS-Chem Working Group that is most relevant to his/her area of research. Please see the following working group wiki pages for more information:

  1. Adjoint and Data Assimilation Working Group
  2. Aerosols Working Group
  3. Carbon Gases and Organics Working Group
  4. Hg and POPs Working Group
  5. Oxidants and Chemistry Working Group
  6. Regional Air Quality Working Group
  7. Sources and Sinks Working Group

Each GEOS-chem user should also post a short description of their project(s) on the relevant Working Group wiki page. Please remove any obsolete projects, add new ones, and review the work planned by other groups. This will allow the Working Group Chairpersons to be informed about the type of research that is being conducted by individual GEOS-Chem users while avoiding duplication of effort.

News from the GEOS-Chem Support Team

Opening for scientific programmer position

Daniel Jacob wrote:

Dear GEOS-Chem user -
Claire Carouge, valued member of the GEOS-Chem support team, is moving to Australia. She will fortunately be able to continue support GC operations for a while remotely but we need to replace her. So -
I am looking to hire a top-notch scientific programmer to support the GEOS-Chem model for the worldwide user community (50%) and operations at Harvard (50%). The ideal candidate for the job would be a PhD scientist with modeling experience and who would like to work in this support position for a while or long-term. Career growth opportunities are excellent.
Please bring this job opportunity to the attention of whoever you think may be interested. Interested candidates, please contact me.
Best wishes with your GEOS-Chem modeling!
Daniel J. Jacob
GEOS-Chem Model Scientist

Logistics

Claire Carouge will move to Australia by the end of October. She will be able to work remotely from Australia and continue to provide GEOS-Chem support. Bob Yantosca will remain at Harvard and will continue to coordinate all GEOS-Chem support tasks with Claire.

Due to the time difference between Boston and Canberra (14 hours), communication will necessarily take longer. Therefore, this may result in increased turnaround times for GEOS-Chem support requests. We ask for your patience in this regard.

On the other hand...having Claire in Australia also means that we can for the first time bring you round-the-clock GEOS-Chem support! Those of you who live in Asia or Oceania will directly benefit from this!

GEOS-Chem Communications

Website

The GEOS-Chem People and Projects and GEOS-Chem Publications pages have recently been updated.

If you have new paper submissions, please send them to Bob and Claire at geos-chem-support@as.harvard.edu.

NOTE: Due to a recent security incident, the following websites:

  1. Harvard Atmospheric Chemistry Group
  2. GEOS-Chem website
  3. GAMAP website

are unable to be modified. We are working with the IT department at the Harvard School of Engineering to remedy this situation. In the meantime, please bear with us.

Wiki

We encourage all GEOS-Chem code developers and users to check the wiki frequently, as this is the place where the latest information about GEOS-Chem will be posted. The wiki is designed to be a two-way street of communication. Users should feel free to add content to the wiki pages that are most closely related to their research.

In particular, the GEOS-Chem Support Team has started a new effort to make sure that all 3rd-party code and data that is submitted into GEOS-Chem has a corresponding wiki page. This will ensure that all information can be shared transparently.

Notable recent updates:

  1. The GEOS-Chem welcome letter for new users has been reorganized to provide a clearer explanation of the expectations and responsibilities of all GEOS-Chem users, as well as how to download the GEOS-Chem source code and data.
  2. A table of recently-released GEOS-Chem versions, release dates, and important features has been added to the GEOS-Chem versions under development page.
  3. A new Dynamic tropopause page has been created. This describes the implementation of the dynamic tropopause in GEOS-Chem. Information about the tropopause diagnostics is also provided here.
  4. The Mercury simulation page and Global Terrestrial Mercury Model page have been updated with the latest information for GEOS-Chem v8-03-02.
  5. A page for GEOS-Chem v9-01-01 has been added.

Email lists

All GEOS-Chem users should sign up for the GEOS-Chem Users email list, as well as one or more of the following Working Group email lists:

  1. GEOS-Chem Adjoint
  2. GEOS-Chem Aerosols
  3. GEOS-Chem Carbon Gases & Organics
  4. GEOS-Chem Hg & POPs
  5. GEOS-Chem Oxidants & Chemistry
  6. GEOS-Chem Regional Air Quality
  7. GEOS-Chem Sources & Sinks (formerly "Emissions")

GEOS-Chem development

GEOS-Chem v8-03-02

GEOS-Chem v8-03-02 was released on 07 Sep 2010 and contains the following updates:

  1. Terrestrial and deep ocean mercury (N. Smith-Downey, E. Sunderland)
  2. Updated CO2 simulation (R. Nassar)
  3. Liquid water content taken from GEOS-5 met fields (J. Fisher)

Also, a couple of patches were made after the release of v8-03-02. These patches have been added to the remote GEOS-Chem repository.

Please see our Using Git with GEOS-Chem wiki page for more information about how to download and manage the GEOS-Chem source code.

GEOS-Chem v9-01-01

Overview

GEOS-Chem v8-03-01 was released on 04 May 2010. We recommend all GEOS-Chem users to migrate to v8-03-01 when feasible.

NOTE: At present the Caltech isoprene scheme should not be used, as there are still some unresolved issues to be worked out. We will let you know when it is ready.

In the pipeline

The following updates will be added into GEOS-Chem following the v8-03-01 release.

Item Author(s) Status
APM aerosol microphysics Fangqun Yu APM code is ready. Work is currently being done at SUNY/Albany to interface APM into GEOS-Chem. Currently slated for inclusion after the release of GEOS-Chem v8-03-02.
Bromine chemistry mechanism Justin Parella We have begun the process to bring this into the standard code. Will be included after the release of GEOS-Chem v8-03-02.
Add scavenging by snow Qiaoqiao Wang Slated for inclusion after the release of GEOS-Chem v8-03-02.

For a complete list of outstanding code updates, please see our GEOS-Chem model development priorities page.

MERRA reanalysis met fields

Overview

The GEOS-Chem Support Team has started the process of modifying GEOS-Chem for use with the MERRA met field product. MERRA is a 30-year reanalysis done with GMAO's GEOS-5.2.0 GCM.

While many aspects of MERRA are similar to the GEOS-5 data product, there are significant differences in certain data fields that require special handling before GEOS-Chem be driven by the MERRA product.

For the latest information, please the following wiki pages:

  1. MERRA
  2. List of MERRA met fields used by GEOS-Chem
  3. MERRA implementation details

Wet scavenging

Helen Amos, Bess Corbitt, and

Data availability

GEOS-Chem v9-01-01 will be the first GEOS-Chem version to be compatible with MERRA.

Column code update

An ESMF Gridded Component has been created which calls the GEOS-Chem column chemistry routines. Some key bugs have now been fixed and work to finalize the interface has begun. Bob is currently testing to make sure that the column chemistry code running within the ESMF environment returns the same output as when driven in a GEOS-Chem test environment. The work is ongoing.

At present, column code development is on the back burner due to the pressing need to modify GEOS-Chem to be driven by the MERRA reanalysis product from GMAO.

--Bob Y. 11:33, 28 September 2010 (EDT)