Getting Started with UKCA

From UKCA

Within the United Kingom UKCA is supported by NCAS both on ARCHER, the UK's national supercomputing resource, and on the Met Office - NERC joint supercomputer MONSooN.

To use either supercomputer you will first need an account on PUMA which runs the Unified Model User Interface (UMUI). It is also advised that you familiarise yourself with FCM which is used to manage the UM repository.

If you have any further questions, please contact Luke Abraham.

ARCHER

For academics with NERC grants but who do not have any time on ARCHER it is possible to apply for time using the NERC HPC 'new' form.

For academics working in the atmospheric sciences but who do not have a NERC grant it may be possible to get a small amount from the NCAS allocation which can be used to do some UKCA runs prior to submitting a NERC grant. For further information please contact Dr Grenville Lister who is head of NCAS-CMS.

MONSooN

For NERC researchers and academics who have a collaboration with the Met Office, and who feel that their project would benefit from being able to do joint runs, it is possible to apply for a MONSooN account. More information can be found on the MONSooN website. The MONSooN resource is primarily for development work rather than production runs.

More information about the MONSooN service can be found on the collaboration twiki. Please note however that this site is password protected and registration is required. Only UM users who have a license to use the UM are able to register.

PUMA

The UK Met Office's Unified Model (UM) is provided for the NERC community from NCAS Computational Modelling Services via the PUMA (Providing UM Access) resource. To use UKCA you must have an account on PUMA. To obtain one, please go to the NCAS-CMS PUMA page.

NOTE: The NCAS-CMS webpage is currently in the process of being redesigned. There is a wiki site that is being used until the new site is ready.

FCM

The UM uses code management software, built around subversion, called FCM (Flexible Configuration Management).

If you have not used the UM with FCM, we ask that you first familiarise yourself with the system by doing the UM FCM Tutorial.

As well as being a good introduction to FCM and the UMUI, it will also teach you how to set-up some configuration files that will be needed in the day-to-day running of the UM and UKCA.

Met Office Science Repository Service

To run UKCA at UM version 10.0 and above, you will need an account on the Met Office Science Repository Service. This site states

To register for an account, Met Office staff should contact Scientific_Partnerships@metoffice.gov.uk. 
Other users should contact their local institutional sponsor. If in doubt, please contact
Scientific_Partnerships@metoffice.gov.uk for advice stating your affiliate institution
and your reason for wanting access.

Links