What are the WRF - ARW weather model hardware and software requirements?

I want to run WRF - ARW model for a small domain of 100X100 km at a grid size of 3X3 km or smaller for forecasting weather parameters, which will be used as an input in a crop simulation model to forecast crop yield.

I need to purchase the required hardware and software for it but I'm very confused of the requirements and specifications which are required for the purpose.

I seek help to answer the following questions:

(1) What is the minimum and optimum H/W specification required and available in the market (preferably in India).

(2) What Linux OS Version and other compilers that would required to be installed?

Thanks

Vinay Sehgal

Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi

WRF

Agriculture Research

Atmospheric Modeling

Regional Climate Modeling

Bar Ilan University

Vinay,

You should have a look at the WRF documentation/users guide to get a detailed answer as suggested by Javier. A bare minimum would be: a reasonably fast computer (for example, an Intel i7 processor fits the bill), a stable version of Linux, and Fortran 90 and C compilers. You may need to add other libraries such as netcdf or mpich depending on your model configuration and options. Your model domain and resolution are quite modest so a fairly standard desktop, or even a laptop should work. I am running another regional model (RSM) over the Mediterranean region (as much as 5000 X 2000 km) with resolutions ranging from 40 down to 10 km on an i7 based desktop with 8 GB memory, 2 X 1TB disks, Suse 12.3 Linux for periods of a few days (higher resolution) and up to a season (lower resolution). I have tried intel, pgi, and gfortran (free) compilers. I even have a coupled RSM-ROMS (atmosphere-ocean) model running on a laptop. The point is that you can do a lot with commonly available, reasonably priced hardware and software, although I wouldn't recommend this configuration for long term climate simulations. We have come a long way from the days of the IBM 370 or CDC 7600 which I used for my PhD research many moons ago. Bottom line is you must decide on the budget you have available as well as what kind of computational demands you will be making. Good luck.

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