6. Initial conditions file

Makes an initial conditions file with basic assumptions. The initial conditions or state file contains a number of modeling options. The state file is an .nc file with dimensions nSoil, nSnow, midSoil, midToto, ifcToto and scalarv. See: https://summa.readthedocs.io/en/latest/input_output/SUMMA_input/#initial-conditions-restart-or-state-file

State parameters are set at hard-coded values as follows:

Parameter

Value

Units

Description

dt_init

taken from control file

s

Time step size of forcing data

nSoil

8

-

Number of soil layers

nSnow

0

-

Number of currently active snow layers

iLayerHeight

[0, 0.025, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2.5, 4]

m

Location of layer boundaries. 0 at the soil surface with positive numbers indicating deeper layers

mLayerDepth

[0.025, 0.075, 0.15, 0.25, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 1.5]

m

Height of each active layer

scalarCanopyIce

0

kg m-2

Current ice storage in the canopy

scalarCanopyLiq

0

kg m-2

Current liquid water storage in the canopy

scalarSnowDepth

0

m

Current snow depth

scalarSWE

0

kg m-2

Current snow water equivalent

scalarSfcMeltPond

0

kg m-2

Current ponded melt water

scalarAquiferStorage

1.0

m

Current aquifer storage

scalarSnowAlbedo

0

-

Current snow albedo

scalarCanairTemp

283.16

K

Current temperature in the canopy airspace

scalarCanopyTemp

283.16

K

Current temperature of the canopy

mLayerTemp

283.16

K

Current temperature of each layer; assumed that all layers are identical

mLayerVolFracIce

0

-

Current ice storage in each layer; assumed that all layers are identical

mLayerVolFracLiq

0.2

-

Current liquid water storage in each layer; assumed that all layers are identical

mLayerMatricHead

-1.0

m

Current matric head in each layer; assumed that all layers are identical

SUMMA has built-in capability to save the model states at a given time step. This behaviour is controlled by runtime argument -r (for “restart”) and parameter year, month, day or end. Runs can be restarted from such a file by changing the name of the initConditionFile entry in fileManager.txt. Such files can also form the basis for a more appropriate initial conditions file when they result from long runs. This initial long run can be treated as a model warm-up period and the restart file can be used as an approximation of the slowly changing model states. The folder 0_tools that is part of this repository contains a script that can be used to strip the snow layers from a restart file if desired.