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Part 1: Preparing the CESM Environment

Prerequisites

You will need:

  • A VSC account
  • Access to the Hydra cluster at VUB
  • CESM dependencies available through the module system

For UGent users:

  • Input data will be stored in shared UGent storage
  • Simulations will be compiled and executed on Hydra
  • Model output should be written to $VSC_SCRATCH, which is local to Hydra

Load Required Modules

Load the CESM dependencies:

module load CESM-deps/2-foss-2024a

Create the CESM Directory Structure

Create a working directory:

mkdir $VSC_SCRATCH/cesm

Create the standard CESM folder structure:

mkdir $VSC_SCRATCH/cesm/cases
mkdir $VSC_SCRATCH/cesm/output
mkdir $VSC_SCRATCH/cesm/sources

Create a symbolic link to the shared CESM input data repository:

ln -sf /data/gent/vo/000/gvo00074/inputdata_cesm \
       $VSC_SCRATCH/cesm/inputdata

The resulting directory structure should look like:

cesm/
├── cases/
├── output/
├── sources/
└── inputdata

Download CTSM

Move to the sources directory:

cd $VSC_SCRATCH/cesm/sources

Clone CTSM:

git clone -b ctsm5.2.0 https://github.com/ESCOMP/CTSM ctsm-5.2.0

Download External Components

Move into the CTSM source directory:

cd ctsm-5.2.0

Download the required external components:

./manage_externals/checkout_externals

This step downloads all CESM components required by CTSM.

Configure CESM for Hydra

Add the Hydra machine configuration to CESM:

update-cesm-machines -m ctsm $EBROOTCESMMINDEPS/machines/

This allows CESM to recognise Hydra as a supported machine for compilation and job submission.