History diagnostic allows for mistake in frequency/duration error

[Mbavhi1]

Your name

Mbavhi

Your affiliation

University of York

What happened? What did you expect to happen?

I made a mistake in the frequency and duration rows in HISTORY.rc, setting a frequency greater than the duration. Rather than the model giving an error it instead output files without any data. I would expect this to return an error and model failure rather than creating files with no actual model output.

What are the steps to reproduce the bug?

In HISTORY.rc

#==============================================================================
# %%%%% THE SpeciesConc COLLECTION %%%%%
#
# GEOS-Chem species concentrations (default = all species)
#
# Available for all simulations
#
# Concentrations may be saved out as SpeciesConcVV  [v/v dry air] or
#                                    SpeciesConcMND [molec/cm3]
#==============================================================================
  SpeciesConc.template:       '%y4%m2%d2_%h2%n2z.nc4',
  SpeciesConc.frequency:      00000001 000000
  SpeciesConc.duration:       00000000 010000
  SpeciesConc.mode:           'time-averaged'
  SpeciesConc.fields:         'SpeciesConcVV_?ALL?           ',
                              ##'SpeciesConcMND_?ALL?          ',
::
#==============================================================================

Please attach any relevant configuration and log files.

No response

What GEOS-Chem version were you using?

14.4.3

What environment were you running GEOS-Chem on?

Local cluster

What compiler and version were you using?

gcc 12.2

Will you be addressing this bug yourself?

No

In what configuration were you running GEOS-Chem?

GCClassic

What simulation were you running?

Full chemistry

As what resolution were you running GEOS-Chem?

4x5

What meterology fields did you use?

MERRA-2

Additional information

No response

[lizziel]

Thanks for reporting this. We will add a fix in the next version.

[yantosca]

Thanks @lizziel and @Mbavhi1. I did a test where:

Run duration in geoschem_config.yml: 1 hour
SpeciesConc.frequency: 00000100 000000
SpeciesConc.duration:  00000000 010000

This causes an error:

HISTORY (INIT): Opening ./HISTORY.rc
===============================================================================
GEOS-Chem ERROR: No diagnostic output will be created for collection: 
"SpeciesConc"!  Make sure that the length of the simulation as specified in 
geoschem_config.yml (check the start and end dates) is not shorter than the 
frequency setting in HISTORY.rc! For example, if the frequency is 010000 (1 
hour) but the simulation is set up to run for only 20 minutes, then this error 
will occur.
 -> at History_ReadCollectionData (in module History/history_mod.F90)

 -> ERROR occurred at (or near) line     81 of the HISTORY.rc file
===============================================================================

because the duration is less than the length of the run specified in geoschem_config.yml. So far so good.

Then I tried:

  Run length in geoschem_config.yml: 1 hour
  SpeciesConc.frequency:      00000000 010000
  SpeciesConc.duration:       00000000 001000

and this does not give any error. Thus:

1. We have an error check if the duration tag is not less than the length of the run in geoschem_config.yml
2. We DO NOT have an error check if the duration tag is not less than the frequency tag.

This should be a straightforward fix. Thanks @Mbavhi1 for bringing this to our attention.

[yantosca]

This issue is now fixed by PR #2593, which will ship with GEOS-Chem 14.5.1. We can now close this issue. Thank you @Mbavhi1 for alerting is to this.