WRF Tutorial

Super unfinished! Will update soon.

This is a guide for configuring, compiling, and running WRF and the WRF Preprocessing System (WPS) using Sharcnet machines. This guide is meant to supplement the WRF User Tutorial. Graham has pre-compiled WRF modules available. However, you may find yourself needing to compile WRF and WPS yourself. Both of these options, along with supplementary troubleshooting material, can be found below.

Using Pre-compiled Modules

The current (as of May 2018) configuration of WRF and WPS that work together on Graham are WPS 3.8.1 and WRF 3.8.1. Copy the following directories into WRF and WPS directories in your desired ~/projects directory:

/cvmfs/soft.computecanada.ca/easybuild/software/2017/avx2/MPI/intel2016.4/openmpi2.1/wrf/3.8.1/WRF
/cvmfs/soft.computecanada.ca/easybuild/software/2017/avx2/MPI/intel2016.4/openmpi2.1/wps/3.8.1/WPS

To use the modules, type:

module load wrf/3.8.1
module load wps/3.8.1

at the start of each session. It it helpful to add these lines to your ~/.bashrc.

To view the options that were used when compiling to configure WRF and WPS, see:

WRFV3/configure.wrf
WPS/configure.wps

Acquiring Data

To run WRF using real-data, you will need to acquire both static geography data and GRIB (General Regularly-distributed Information in Binary form) data that describes the weather conditions.

Geography Data

Create and navigate to a /geog directory and download the high-resolution geography data found here:

wget http://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/download/get_sources_wps_geog.html

You will need to put the appropriate path to this data in your namelist.wps.

GRIB Data

Download reanalysis data for your simulation preferred dates. It's suggested to use NARR-A data using the HAS data access link on the NOAA Website. Place this data in the /DATA directory.

If you're using NARR data, you will need to link the appropriate Variable Table. In the /WPS directory, type:

ln -sf ungrib/Variable_Tables/Vtable.NARR Vtable

Useful Tips

Like ncview, ncdump, ncks, TSlist, bash scripts for TSlist, plotgrids_old, etc.

Troubleshooting Resources

All the WRF errors! Debug level!