Cowast

Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere-Wave-Sediment Trnaspost (COWAST) is public domain software developed by the United States Geological Services. The COWAST modeling system couples model components representing different earth systems, such as the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, the Simulating Waves Nearshore (SWAN) model, The Regional Ocean Modeling system (ROMS), and the community Sediment Transport Modelling System (CSTMS). The models are coupled using the Model coupling toolkit. See https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/coawst-modeling-system-0. Also, see https://geonarrative.usgs.gov/coawst_daily_forecast/ for COWAST daily forecasts and https://www.usgs.gov/centers/whcmsc/science/coawst-a-coupled-ocean-atmosphere-wave-sediment-transport-modeling-system.

The current COWAST version is 3.8 and can be cloned from https://github.com/DOI-USGS/COAWST

Installing COWAST from source:

COWAST supports MPI and can be installed with Intel or GCC compilers MPI enabled. At HiperGator we use OPENMPI. In addition, matching netcdf-c, netcdf-f and HDF5 modules must be present.

First, build and install the MCT library. Go to COAWST/Lib/MCT and use the given configure file with the installation prefix (no other modifications are needed), After configuring, make, make install. Set the environment variables MCT_INCDIR and MCT_LIBDIR to MCT installation directory (or create a module file to set these variables. Since MCT (coupling of WRF, ROMS, etc components) used only in COWAST we choose not to create an env. module instead set the env. variables MCT_INCDIR and MCT_LIBDIR ).

To build, COWAST, modify the build_coawst.sh in the top level to match the installation parameters. These involve setting the compiler, specifying the PATH netcdf-lib, and turning on the HDF5 support. The build_coawst.sh, configures and builds the software, and the binary coawstM is installed in the top-level directory.

COWAST use:

A user guide can be downloaded from http://mtc-m21c.sid.inpe.br/col/sid.inpe.br/mtc-m21c/2020/10.02.15.11/doc/publicacao.pdf (and other online sources easily found from a web search). The binary coawstM is problem specific, and therefore the users of COWAST must be able to compile as they build the models. Unlike most other software HPG support, this nullifies having a fixed env module that the users can use. For example, the Hurricane Sandy project which couples and nests WRF, ROMS, and SWAN are described in http://mtc-m21c.sid.inpe.br/col/sid.inpe.br/mtc-m21c/2020/10.02.15.11/doc/publicacao.pdf section 2.9. When the steps are completed, a binary coawstM is produced for that particular simulation, and so on for other projects. Users decide the project and UF research computing provides the necessary expertise to carry out the tasks necessary to use COWAST software. The HPG users who need assistance in using COWAST are asked to open a support ticket.