On This Page:
Welcome & Description
Welcome to the Unified Post Processor (UPP) page. The UPP is a software package designed to generate useful products from raw model output. It:
- Reads and processes GFS and Limited Area Model (LAM) data from the FV3 dynamical core
- Generates output in GRIB2 format
- Uses MPI parallel code
- Produces hundreds of products like those used operationally on the same operational grids
The UPP was developed at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and is used operationally for several models maintained by NCEP. It is also used in the Unified Forecast System (UFS), including the Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS), the Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS), the Medium-Range Weather (MRW) Application, and the Short-Range Weather (SRW) Application. For more information regarding the UFS, please visit the UFS Portal.
Getting Started
Before running the UPP, users should determine which of the four levels of support is applicable to their system. Generally, Level 1 & 2 systems are restricted to those with access through NOAA and its affiliates. These systems are named (e.g., Hera, Hercules). The UPP should be able to run on any UNIX-based platform (e.g., Mac, Linux) that has the prerequisite libraries installed. However, this has not been tested.
The Building, Running, & Testing chapter of the UPP User’s Guide is an excellent place for new users to begin. It provides details on how to clone the UPP, build it, and run the post-processor using the latest code in the develop branch. Users may prefer to use the v11.0.0 User’s Guide and code, which provides similar instructions for the last stable standalone release of the UPP.
Documentation & User Support
The UPP User’s Guide has the most comprehensive information on the UPP, including links to more thorough technical documentation for its components. Users may need different versions of the User’s Guide depending on their goals:
Version
Description
Documentation for the head of the develop branch. This may have gaps and errors.
Documentation for the most recent standalone release (v11.0.0).
Documentation for the v10.1.0 release.
Developer Support
- The UPP Directory Structure page provides information on the structure of the UPP repository.
The Code Contribution Guidelines describe how to contribute code to the UPP repository.
The Testing the UPP chapter of the User’s Guide provides information on how to run regression tests on UPP code.
Releases
The latest standalone release of the UPP is v11.0.0. See the Releases page for more information on current and past releases.
Release Date: 6/15/2022
Release Description: This release represents a major effort to refactor the UPP code to implement a 2-dimensional decomposition capability. This development was led by UPP developers at NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) with funding through the Hurricane Supplemental funding line. Please see the User’s Guide below for details on how to use this capability.
- Capability added to decompose grids in both x- and y-directions.
- 1D (y-direction only) decomposition is still available.
- Identical results are expected for 1D vs 2D.
- Testing indicated no deterioration in run time and in many cases reduction in run time for existing configurations/applications.
- Further timing improvement expected especially for larger domains.
- Support for this feature has been implemented in offline standalone UPP and inline UPP.
- 2D decomposition is only supported for UFS-based model outputs.
Documentation:
Release Date: 5/26/2022
Release Description: This release is from the release/public-v3 branch and can be used in standalone mode or with the UFS Short-Range Weather (SRW) Application v2.0.0 release.
- Bug fix for SLLEVEL bound issue when not RUC LSM (#464 Commit f22a590)
- Updated Doxygen (#460, #464, #465, #467, #469, #470, #473, #474, #476, #477, #479, #480, #487)
- Unify global and regional FV3 read interfaces for offline post (#453 Commit 5bdb289)
- Add ability to compile script to use non-Intel compilers; add Cheyenne modulefiles for GNU and Intel (#468 Commit af62bd2)
- Bug fix in UPP build script on WCOSS2 Cactus (#481 Commit 95f8383)
- Updated README (#486 Commit b495345)
- Fix a bug in AOD calculation (#489 Commit 44edaf7)
- Update GFS itag files for inline post (#508 Commit fbd41a5)
- Updates to User’s Guide documentation (#475)
- Updates to run_upp script (#492)
Documentation:
Other Links
- The spack-stack repository contains the prerequisite software needed to run the UPP and other UFS software. This software is preinstalled on Level 1 systems (e.g., Hera, Orion). Users can view the spack-stack User’s Guide to install it on other systems.
- UPP README.md file
- GRIB2/WGRIB2 Information: UPP outputs data in GRIB2 format, and WGRIB2 is a utility for reading/writing GRIB2 files. Interested users/developers can find additional information at the following links:
Get Started with the UPP
Resources
Public Release Code
v11.0.0 (latest standalone release)
