Anomalous treatment of namelist option sf_urban_physics

[Chris Thomas]

I am using WRF 4.02, with two domains (inner and outer). The user guide lists the sf_urban_physics namelist option as being a single scalar (ie not dimension max_dom). Thereore I use

sf_urban_physics = 1

in the namelist.

The WRF standard output (debug level 500) tells me:

--- NOTE: sf_urban_physics option must be identical in each domain
--- NOTE: ----> Resetting namelist values to that defined on the inner most domain

and I get sf_urban_physics = 0, the default for the inner domain which was not specified in the namelist.

I think that either the code should be changed so that the namelist option is a single value (which it should be if it is to be the same for each nest), or the documentation should be changed to show that it is of dimension max_dom.

Regards

Chris

 

[kwerner]

Hi Chris,
Thanks for pointing this out. I have updated the documentation to show that it should be a "max_dom" variable. Because of the way that the code is written, we can't make it just a single variable, so unfortunately you'll need to set it to the same value for each domain.

Kelly

 

[Chris Thomas]

Thanks Kelly.
Perhaps the documentation should also make it clear that the values for sf_urban_physics must be the same for each nest.
Chris

 

[kwerner]

Hi Chris,
This is the case for all of the namelist physics options (with the exception of cu_physics and PBL, which can be turned off for particular domains), so I updated the latest version (v4.1) of the Users' Guide namelist descriptions to indicate this for all of those, including sf_urban_physics. Thanks for the suggestions!

Kelly