Saving time series of spatially-varying diagnostic quantities¶

Sometimes it is useful to have PISM save a handful of diagnostic maps at some interval like every 10 years or even every month. One can use snapshots (section Saving re-startable snapshots of the model state), but doing so can easily fill your hard-drive because snapshots are complete (i.e. re-startable) model states. Sometimes you want a subset of model variables saved frequently in an output file.

Use options -extra_file, -extra_times, and -extra_vars for this. For example,

pismr -i foo.nc -y 10000 -o output.nc -extra_file extras.nc \
      -extra_times 0:10:1e4 -extra_vars velsurf_mag,velbase_mag

will run for 10000 years, saving the magnitude of horizontal velocities at the ice surface and at the base of ice every 10 years. Times are specified using a comma-separated list or a MATLAB-style range. See Table 31 for all the options controlling this feature. The section Spatially-variable fields list all the variable choices.

Note

Some diagnostics are only available if the simulation uses a sub-model that provides them. PISM will stop with an error message if a diagnostic is requested but not available. To print a warning and continue instead of stopping, set output.extra.stop_missing to “false”.

Note that options -extra_times, -save_times, -ts_times take dates if a non-trivial calendar is selected. For example,

pismr ... -extra_times 10       # every 10 years
pismr ... -extra_times 2days    # every 2 days
pismr ... -calendar gregorian -extra_times 1-1-1:daily:11-1-1 # daily for 10 years
pismr ... -calendar gregorian -extra_times daily -ys 1-1-1 -ye 11-1-1
pismr ... -calendar gregorian -extra_times 2hours -ys 1-1-1 -ye 1-2-1

The step in the range specification can have the form Nunit, for example 5days. Units based on “months” and “years” are not supported if a non-trivial calendar is selected.

In addition to specifying a constant step in -extra_times a:step:b one can save every hour, day, month, or every year by using hourly, daily, monthly or yearly instead of a number; for example

pismr -i foo.nc -y 100 -o output.nc -extra_file extras.nc \
      -extra_times 0:monthly:100 -extra_vars dHdt

will save the rate of change of the ice thickness every month for 100 years. With -calendar none (the default), “monthly” means “every \(\frac 1 {12}\) of the year”, and “yearly” is “every \(3.14\ldots\times10^7\)” seconds, otherwise PISM uses month lengths computed using the selected calendar.

It is frequently desirable to save diagnostic quantities at regular intervals for the whole duration of the run; options -extra_times, -ts_times, and -save_times provide a shortcut. For example, use -extra_times yearly to save at the end of every year.

This is especially useful when using a climate forcing file to set run duration:

pismr -i foo.nc -surface given -surface_given_file climate.nc \
      -calendar gregorian -time_file climate.nc \
      -extra_times monthly -extra_file ex.nc -extra_vars thk

will save ice thickness at the end of every month while running PISM for the duration of climate forcing data in climate.nc.

Times given using -extra_times describe the reporting intervals by giving the endpoints of these reporting intervals. The save itself occurs at the end of each interval. This implies, for example, that 0:1:10 will produce 10 records at times 1,…,10 and not 11 records.

If the file foo.nc, specified by -extra_file foo.nc, already exists then by default the existing file will be moved to foo.nc~ and the new time series will go into foo.nc. To append the time series onto the end of the existing file, use option -extra_append.

The list of available diagnostic quantities depends on the model setup. For example, a run with only one vertical grid level in the bedrock thermal layer will not be able to save litho_temp, an SIA-only run does not use a basal yield stress model and so will not provide tauc, etc. To see which quantities are available in a particular setup, use the -list_diagnostics option, which prints the list of diagnostics and stops.

The -extra_file mechanism modifies PISM’s adaptive time-stepping scheme so as to step to, and save at, exactly the times requested. By contrast, as noted in subsection Saving time series of scalar diagnostic quantities, the -ts_file mechanism does not alter PISM’s time-steps and instead uses linear interpolation to save at the requested times in between PISM’s actual time-steps.

Table 31 Command-line options controlling extra diagnostic output¶
Option	Description
`-extra_file`	Specifies the file to save to; should be different from the output (`-o`) file.
`-extra_times`	Specifies times to save at either as a MATLAB-style range \(a:\Delta t:b\) or a comma-separated list.
`-extra_vars`	Comma-separated list of variables
`-extra_split`	Save to separate files, similar to `-save_split`.
`-extra_append`	Append variables to file if it already exists. No effect if file does not yet exist, and no effect if `-extra_split` is set.