Vestland Climate Grids enhencement for NorESM-LSP (may be a new branch of the platform?)

[huitang-earth]

As far as I know, there have been several modelling work planned for Vestland Climate Grids, including my moss model development, @ecaas soil decomposition model, @evalieungh transplant experiments etc.

These work require a better input data and setup for these sites, which are not available in the current version of the platform.

I have spent some efforts together with @kjetilaas, @srg101, @ingealthuizen to improve some of the input data for our moss work, which include:

• Climate forcing from COSMO-REA 6km resolution, 1995-2019. This has been tested to be significantly better than the default forcing GSWP3 for the Vestland Grid. It might also work better than ERA5 owing to its high spatial resolution.
• A python script for automatically downloading climate forcing from ERA5 (about 30 km resolution) for a site and convert to a format that CTSM-FATES need. The time periods can be extended to near real time about 1-3 months time lag.
• Surface data that include observed vegetation cover fraction, plant height, soil depth (bedrock), soil organic matter and slope!
• PFT parameters file for moss.

Hope these information serve as a starting point for anyone who is interested in further enhencing the input and setup data for Vestland Climate Grid sites. I am happy to share these these efforts already through the platform. Perhaps, a new branch of the platform for Vestland climate grids enhancement would be a good idea?

Please let me know your opinions, especially those who plan to work on these sites using the platform @evalieungh and @ecaas.

[evalieungh]

Setting up a new branch sounds like a good idea, @huitang-earth, and I agree it would be nice to make individual developments available for everyone through work on a new branch. @ecaas and I have glanced at your script for making the surface data already, and wondered how much work is needed to re-run them if necessary and to store the data somewhere available for the LSP.

About the COSMO data, we should coordinate with @yelizy who is also working on making improved forcing data for at least some of the VCG sites using Toposcale-downscaled ERA 5 data. I'm not familiar with which is best, but either way it doesn't hurt to have more options.

Is is possible for anyone to download the COSMO data directly from Fram via the internet, or do we have to log in to access it?

For my own project, I only need data for the four alpine (ALP1-4) VCG sites right now. Depending on how much work it is, though, it would be great to help make a coherent set of improved forcing and surface data for all the 12 VCG sites that is integrated in the LSP.

About the moss PFT, would it require changes to the code to make it available through the GUI?

Tagging old issues #141 and #40 here as they seem relevant and might be superseded by this discussion. I think we might convert this issue to a discussion thread.