This page describes the basic steps of running a forecast experiment using OpenIFS.
Experiment files are provided by the OpenIFS team at ECMWF as gzipped tarfile. These files provide initial and boundary conditions and currently are provided on request to the user for download via ftp.ecmwf.int.
This page can only provide the basic steps to run OpenIFS as the requirements for at user sites vary considerably depending on the hardware, batch scheduling system and so on.
Set the environment
Use the oifs-config.sh file created when building OpenIFS to correctly set the run environment for the model.
% source ./oifs-config.sh
How to run the forecast: oifs_run
The recommended way to run the OpenIFS model to perform a forecast is to use the run script 'bin/oifs_run'. This has a number of arguments to control the model. It verifies all the settings and if necessary creates the missing links in the experiment directory to the ifsdata required. It calls the executable by invoking the MPI environment (which may well be hardware dependent) and will initiate postprocessing of the experiment results by moving the GRIB model output and concatenate fields according to time step.
By calling oifs_run the model will run interactively in the login shell:
% oifs_run -r -e -n
Passing on the appropriate command line parameters can further be simplified by writing a brief batch job script which itself calls oifs_run with the required parameters (or to run interactively).