Additional diagnostics

By default, WRF-GC outputs all instantaneous species mixing ratios (ppmv) at the output frequency (history_interval in namelist.input). However, other diagnostics provided by GEOS-Chem may be useful for your research. We document some methods to write GEOS-Chem diagnostics in WRF-GC.

Note

Because WRF-GC uses WRF as output, GEOS-Chem diagnostics (specified in HISTORY.rc) are unavailable in WRF-GC. But they can be written using some light code editing.

Limited support for GEOS-Chem diagnostics

The following GEOS-Chem diagnostics (from the GEOS-Chem netCDF/History diagnostics list) are supported in a limited way:

Limited GEOS-Chem diagnostics supported

Diagnostic name

GEOS-Chem name

WRF-GC name (output)

Cloud convection flux

CloudConvFlux

cldcnvflx_n#

Budget: Emissions and Dry deposition

BudgetEmisDryDep

gcemisdrydep_<area>_n#

Budget: Boundary layer mixing

BudgetMixing

gcmixing_<area>_n#

Budget: Convection

BudgetConvection

gcconv_<area>_n#

Budget: Chemistry

BudgetChemistry

gcchem_<area>_n#

Budget: Wet deposition

BudgetWetDep

gcwetdep_<area>_n#

Fraction of soluble species lost in convective updrafts

WetLossConvFrac

wetlscnvfrc_n#

Loss of soluble species in convective updrafts

WetLossConv

wetlscnv_n#

Loss of soluble species in large-scale precipitation

WetLossLS

wetlossls_n#

  • For <area> corresponding to the “Budget” diagnostic series, this can be full (full column), trop (troposphere), and pbl (boundary layer).

  • For n#, only four species are supported in WRF-GC. The species IDs corresponding to the four species chosen for diagnostic output are specified in namelist.input:

gc_diagn_spc_n0                     = 0,
gc_diagn_spc_n1                     = 0,
gc_diagn_spc_n2                     = 0,
gc_diagn_spc_n3                     = 0,

The species list corresponding to their IDs can be obtained in the rsl.out.0000 log by setting namelist.input’s debug_level to 5, and it will be output after the first time step (search for %%%%%% WRFGC_Convert_State_Mod Chemistry State Export %%%%%%). (Remember to set the debug level back to a lower level or your model will run slow!)

Writing custom diagnostics from the GEOS-Chem/HEMCO models

Please refer to Haipeng’s website on outputting extra diagnostics for now. We will migrate this page later.