Simulation not running due to unrecognised isobaric variable

[mpaiao]

I am trying to submit a few simulations to test MONAN's pull request #19, but the simulations are failing right at the beginning, even when I submit the default run. For reference this is what I am trying:

• MONAN's branch: https://github.com/monanadmin/MONAN-Model/tree/feature/monan-757-NF
• convert_mpas' branch: https://github.com/monanadmin/convert_mpas/tree/release/1.2.0
• Meteorological forcing: GFS
• Grid resolution: 1024002
• Initial time 2025-09-22 00 UTC
• Simulation duration: 72 hours

After step 1 (1.install_monan.bash), I make some edits to namelists. Most are just trivial changes (enabling Noah-MP, changing radiation time steps and output interval to 15 minutes), but I subset the output variables, by editing scripts/namelists/include_fields.diag and scripts/namelists/stream_list.atmosphere.diagnostics to the following:

initial_time
xtime
Time
lonCell
latCell
isltyp
ivgtyp
surface_pressure
mslp
t2m
q2
swdnb
lwdnb
swupb
lwupb
rainc
rainnc
uzonal_surface
umeridional_surface
u10
v10
hfx
lh
grdflx
lai
sfcrunoff
udrunoff
z0
canwat
smstot
hpbl
delta
temperature_isobaric

I ran step 2 (2.pre_processing.bash) and it worked fine. However, when I run step 3, the model fails, apparently because it does not recognise temperature_isobaric, see attached logs.

log.atmosphere.0000.err
log.atmosphere.0000.out

I tried to replace temperature_isobaric with actual levels (temperature_15hPa, temperature_20hPa, etc.) but the error persists. It failed even when I did not edit the namelists. I also noted that inside path /path/to/scripts_CD-CT/dataout/2025092200/Model/logs.

Does anyone have any idea of what is causing the problem? Thanks in advance!

[mpaiao]

After chatting with @lhpardo90, it seems the problem is that script 3.run_model.bash has a new variable VARTABLE=".OPER", which means that the script was copying file /path/to/scripts_CD-CT/scripts/namelist/stream_list.atmosphere.diagnostics.OPER instead of /path/to/scripts_CD-CT/scripts/namelist/stream_list.atmosphere.diagnostics to the model run path. After I reset VARTABLE=""`, the script ran fine.

My understanding is that all variables listed in /path/to/scripts_CD-CT/scripts/namelist/stream_list.atmosphere.diagnostics${VARTABLE} must appear in /path/to/scripts/namelists/include_fields.diag too, otherwise MONAN crashes.

I will edit my existing PR (#12) so variable VARTABLE can be configured through dash options (including when called from within 0.run_all.bash), so this variable is a bit more visible to users.

[mpaiao]

To wrap up the issue, after talking to the computing group today, the error with temperature_isobaric not being found is related to the MONAN version I was using. Branch feature/monan-757-NF is based on release/1.2.0-rc, which requires listing the variables at every isobaric level. The option to use variable_isobaric was introduced in release/1.3.0-rc.