In the namelist which comes with the test case for the SCM, the variable NSMAX (the maximum truncation) is set to 159. Does this some-how reflect the horizontal resolution (size) of the SCM? Also is it a good idea to change NSMAX?

 

3 Comments

  1. Filip Vana

    This parameter is useful for the convection scheme. It affects the adjustment time there. In principle higher resolution (or higher value of maximum wave number) implies shorter adjustment time for the mass-fux there.

    The default value (for SCM) makes the convection to be producing relatively smooth results. You may like to increase the value of NSMAX to make convection more rapidly responding to the other forcing. But this may also result in a noisy response. My suggestion is unless you are playing with the convection scheme and know exactly what you are doing you should keep this parameter unmodified.

    1. Victoria Sinclair

      Ok, thanks. One other question.  How large an area is the SCM representative of? For example, I have LES data (the LES model domain is about 100km by 100km) and I want to know how many grid point from the LES model I should average over to give a fair comparison.

      1. Filip Vana

        This is very difficult question. I suppose this should be mainly related to the resolution of the SCM forcing data. When those are obtained with GCM of say 8 km horizontal resolution you should be theoretically comparing them with the same area of LES. But I can imagine this rule is not carved to stone.