UM and ACCESS FAQ

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Who can gain access to the UM and the ACCESS models?

The full ACCESS model is made up of a number of sub-models for different processes - UM for the atmosphere, MOM for the ocean and CABLE for the land surface. Each of these components was created by different groups with different conditions of use.

The Met Office Unified Model is proprietary software released under a commercial licence. The Australian University community has a sub-licence to use the UM from CAWCR, managed by ARCCSS. Australian researchers outside of ARCCSS may request access to the model by emailing access_help@nf.nci.org.au. Note that our licence is restricted to running the model at NCI and does not permit sharing of model code outside of the UM partnership.

GFDL's Modular Ocean Model is open-source software available under the GPL. Any researcher is free to use, modify and share the model code.

CSIRO's CABLE model is proprietary software. See the | licence agreement for conditions of use.

What to do to gain access to the UM and the ACCESS models?

ARCCSS researchers can get access to the UM and ACCESS models by contacting the CMS team at climate_help@nf.nci.org.au. Researchers outside of ARCCSS should contact the general ACCESS helpdesk at access_help@nf.nci.org.au. Using the models requires an account at | NCI, the Australian national supercomputing centre.

What to do to use the software in /projects/access/bin?

Several tools useful for working with ACCESS are available at NCI under the path /projects/access/bin. These tools include output viewers and converters between the UM file format and standard formats like NetCDF and GRIB. To access these tools you must be registered as an ACCESS user (see above).

How to convert UM hybrid vertical coordinates to pressure levels

The formula for the vertical coordinate is: http://climate-cms.wikis.unsw.edu.au/Vertical_Coordinates 

Iris will compute the height variable directly if the file you read in has the orography in. 

If you have the pressure field in your file as well, Metpy might then help you to interpolate your fields to specific pressure levels: https://unidata.github.io/MetPy/latest/examples/sigma_to_pressure_interpolation.html#sphx-glr-examples-sigma-to-pressure-interpolation-py