Getting Started with UKCA
THIS PAGE IS STILL UNDER DEVELOPMENT
Within the United Kingom UKCA is supported by NCAS both on HECToR, 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.
HECToR
For academics with NERC grants but who do not have any time on HECToR 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.
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.
