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GEOS-Chem "Science Codebase" repository. Contains GEOS-Chem science routines, run directory generation scripts, and interface code. This repository is used as a submodule within the GCClassic and GCHP wrappers, as well as in other modeling contexts (external ESMs).
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[BUG] Error in StateMet diagnostic variable name #1487

Closed cdholmes closed 1 year ago

cdholmes commented 1 year ago

Description of the problem

Two of the StateMet diagnostic variables have incorrect or misleading names in the HISTORY netCDF output. This has no impact on any calculations within the model, but model users could be confused with the current names. In NetCDF files containing these variables, AIRVOL is described as "Volume of dry air in grid box" and BXHEIGHT is described as "Grid box height (w/r/t dry air)." In spite of these names, neither of these variables uses any dry air quantities and calculations with both dry and moist quantities should use the same volume and height.

Solution

I recommend using the following descriptions in Headers/state_met_mod.F90 

      CASE ( 'AIRVOL' )
          IF ( isDesc  ) Desc  = 'Volume of grid box'

      CASE ( 'BXHEIGHT' )
          IF ( isDesc  ) Desc  = 'Grid box height'

GEOS-Chem version

13.4 (at least)

yantosca commented 1 year ago

Thanks @cdholmes. We can get this into 14.0.2, as it's a simple fix.

yantosca commented 1 year ago

@lizziel, do you have any comments about this update?

Also tagging @Jourdan-He and @SaptSinha

yantosca commented 1 year ago

Integration tests pending

yantosca commented 1 year ago

We can now close this issue as PR #1490 has been merged into the 14.0.2 development stream.

lizziel commented 1 year ago

Sorry to be so late to getting back on this. The updates look fine to me. I'm not sure why that language snuck in there in the first place since it is indeed confusing. If interested, users can see how BXHEIGHT is computed in calc_met_mod.F90 where there is a detailed description of the formula (hypsometric equation using virtual temperature and dry air molecular weight).