Namelist Configuration

AceCAST vs WRF Overview

As we have discussed previously, AceCAST is simply a GPU-accelerated implementation of the CPU-based WRF model that is widely used by the community. We strive to make AceCAST a simple drop-in replacement for CPU WRF to keep things as simple as possible for our users. This means it uses the same input files (wrfinput*, wrfbdy*, etc.) and configuration files (namelist.input) and produces the same output files (wrfout*, wrfrst*, etc.) as CPU WRF. It will even produce the same results in the output fields (within acceptable floating-point error tolerances) for simulations using the same input and configuration files as CPU WRF.

The one caveat to the statement above is that AceCAST does not support every single namelist option that is available in CPU WRF (see CPU WRF Namelist Options). WRF has a huge number of features but many of these namelist options are not used by the majority of WRF users. To ensure the quality and the maintainability of AceCAST, we prioritize supporting the namelist options that have been requested by our users.

Since AceCAST limits the namelist options that are otherwise available in CPU WRF (of which there are thousands), we have developed a number of protections and tools to make sure it is clear to users which options are available as well as to prevent the user from using namelist options that aren’t supported in AceCAST.

General Recommendations for Users

If you are simply looking to see which options are available in AceCAST, we recommend skipping to the Interactive Namelist Support Table App subsection below.

If you already have a namelist (from your CPU WRF configurations or elsewhere) and would like to see if the namelist is supported or not, check out the AceCAST Advisor – Support Check Tool subsection below.

If you are interested in using AceCAST but the options specified in your namelist aren’t currently supported by AceCAST and there aren’t any acceptable alternatives, we would greatly appreciate if you could contact us at support@tempoquest.com to discuss the possibility of supporting those options in future releases.

Interactive Namelist Support Table App

For a complete list of supported namelist options available in AceCAST, we highly recommend checking out the Namelist Support Table App tool.

Most options can be turned off with a value of 0, where applicable. AceCAST supports the same output as WRF which includes but is not limited to netCDF and GRIB.

AceCAST Advisor – Support Check Tool

The acecast-advisor.sh script is provided within the AceCAST distribution packages themselves. Once AceCAST is installed this script (found in the acecast/run/ sub-directory) can be used to check if the options specified in an existing namelist are supported by AceCAST as follows:

Note

We understand that some users may want to check if their namelists are supported by AceCAST prior to installing AceCAST. We are currently working on an online tool that would perform the same tests in a browser to avoid this issue.

# cd to the simulation run directory if you aren't already there
./acecast-advisor.sh --tool support-check