This application is used to compare gem_settings files for GEM/3.3.8. In order to do this, all the namelists and their respective variable declarations were copied into the source of this file. Every variable is referenced back to its original source, but this will be discussed later in the expansion section.
The Fortran component of this app declares all the variables and sets their default values as the GEM model would. It then reads in the specified namelist file to set these variables. Once set, it prints out all the variables.
This output is captured by the python component of this app which formats the variables into a CSV file and carries out some other cleaning tasks (e.g. removing repeated lines.)
The motivation of this app is that many settings files for GEM rely on default values, define values in different orders, have varying custom whitespace, and can be subtlety different making it difficult to spot differences. This app organizes all the key/value pairs into a consistent, ordered, and exportable format that allows for easy comparison.
For example, the CSV output can be imported into a spreadsheet where multiple settings files can be compared at once.
This app is only written for GEM/3.3.8, and does not compare chemistry configuration keys.
The Makefile is designed to work in the Environment Canada environment using s.f90, or elsewise to use
PGI compilers. This is detected by looking for the EC_ARCH environment variable.
To build, simple type
make
Once the app is loaded into your path, use it with your gem_settings file as the first argument:
readNamelist.py gem_settings.nml
Or, to output all the default values, do not specify any file
readNamelist.py
If this app is well adopted, it can be expanded to work with multiple versions of GEM. My recommendation for this would be:
- Include GEM cdk files for variable declarations rather than manually copying them into the source
- Perform a similar task for namelist declarations
This was not done in this version in the interest of de-coupling this app from the EC environment for quick development.
See also checknml, a GUI tool available on Environment Canada systems to verify keys in a gem_settings.nml files.