MPAS-A and MPAS-JEDI Tutorials

The Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology (MMM) Laboratory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) will be hosting an in-person tutorial on the Model for Prediction Across Scales – Atmosphere (MPAS-A), followed by a tutorial covering the use of MPAS-A with the Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration (JEDI) system. The tutorials will take place at NCAR’s Foothills Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado during the week of 18 – 22 September 2023, with the MPAS-A tutorial on 18 – 20 September (Monday – Wednesday) and the MPAS-JEDI tutorial on 21 – 22 September (Thursday – Friday). There will be no online/virtual component for these tutorials.

Attendees can choose to participate in either or both of the tutorials, and each tutorial has its own registration fee.

MPAS-Atmosphere

The MPAS-A tutorial will cover the basics of how to set-up, run, and post-process stand-alone MPAS-A simulations. It will consist of live lectures, questions and answer sessions, and practical sessions where participants will gain experience building, configuring and running the MPAS-Atmosphere model.

Topics that will be covered will include:

• Horizontal (uniform and variable resolution) mesh configuration
• Global and regional configurations
• Real-data and idealized case initialization
• MPAS-A dynamical solver and numerical methods
• MPAS-A physics
• Software framework and MPAS infrastructure
• Post-processing tools

The primary audience for this tutorial is new or beginning users of MPAS-Atmosphere. Basic knowledge of atmospheric science and numerical modeling as well as experience working within a Unix computing environment are required for the tutorial.

MPAS-JEDI

MPAS-JEDI is the global-/regional-unified data assimilation system for MPAS-A based upon the Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration (JEDI). The MPAS-JEDI tutorial will cover the following topics with instructional lectures and hands-on practicals:

• MPAS-JEDI data assimilation software build and test
• Deterministic and ensemble data assimilation algorithms and configurations
• Preprocessing and assimilation settings of observations
• Global and regional applications

Important notes

To participate in the tutorial practical sessions, attendees should plan to bring a laptop that includes a terminal environment that supports shell commands such as 'ssh' (to access a remote computer), and an X11 server (for display). It is the attendee's responsibility to ensure this is set up prior to attending. Tutorial instructors are not able to help with this. There will be a handful of computers available to attendees who are not able to bring a personal system.

Key dates

Registration opens: Monday, 17 July 2023

Last day to register: Monday, 28 August 2023

Registration payments due: Tuesday, 5 September 2023

Registration fees

MPAS-A tutorial: US$ 270

MPAS-JEDI tutorial: US$ 180

Upon registering, you will receive an email acknowledging your application has been received, which means your registration is "pending." If approved, you will receive an additional email stating that you have been accepted into the tutorial(s) and you will be given a link to pay for the registration fees.