NCAR / NCAR/DART

Documentation: clamping is applied only when variables are written

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#734 7 comments 0 reactions 2 assignees View on GitHub

@jlaucar is already working on this.

Since Sep 10, 2024.

Documentation Enhancement Minor QCEFF state_structure
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Fortran
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Description

What's the issue?

Any clamping values are provided in the model_nml in the definition of the state vector,
which implies to me that variables put into the state vector will be clamped.
But clamping happens only during the output of the updated state.

Where did you find the issue?

I discovered it by trying to start an assimilation with state files that had values that were out of bounds
for the QCEFF algorithms I chose, and trying to fix that using clamping.
I didn't find this limitation in the documentation when searching for several variations of "clamp",
so I think that it should be added somewhere easily findable.

What needs to be fixed?

A note in the state_structure page might be enough.
Since users encounter clamping in model_mod and its namelist, the model_mod module page would also be a candidate for a comment.

Suggestions for improvement

It would also be handy if clamping could be applied to the fields as they're read in.
The alternative is to fix the state files before they are read, which can be cumbersome
and another source of mistakes.
Or would it work to put those files through an "assimilation" that did not assimilate or evaluate any obs,
and didn't inflate the ensemble, so that the new fields were identical except for the clamping?
I tried this, but the BNRH algorithm is still finding negatives in the field values and stopping.
I guess it doesn't know that it has no work to do. The case where I tested this is
/glade/derecho/scratch/raeder/Rean_BNRH_debugSST/run and
/glade/work/raeder/Exp/Rean_BNRH_debugSST_git/Rean_BNRH_debugSST

Anything else we should know?

Include any other relevant details, such as references, screenshots, or related discussions.

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