Using a virtual machine environment for developing, testing, and training for the UM-UKCA composition-climate model, using Unified Model version 10.9 and above

Abstract

The Met Office Unified Model (UM) is a state-of-the-art weather and climate model that is used operationally worldwide. UKCA is the chemistry and aerosol sub model of the UM that enables interactive composition and physical atmosphere interactions, but which adds an additional 120,000 lines of code to the model. Ensuring that the UM code and UM-UKCA (the UM running with interactive chemistry and aerosols) is well tested is therefore essential. While a comprehensive test harness is in place at the Met Office and partner sites to aid in development, this is not available to many UM users. Recently the Met Office have made available a Virtual Machine environment that can be used to run the UM on a desktop or laptop PC. Here we describe the development of a UM-UKCA configuration that is able to run within this Virtual Machine while only needing 6GB of memory, before discussing the applications of this system for model development, testing, and training.