How to run WRF-SFIRE

This Howto shows how to build WRF-Fire and run an ideal test case.

Prerequisites

The prerequisites are given by the needs of building WRF.

• NetCDF, must be built with the Fortran interface using the same compiler as used for WRF.
  • Set the environment variables FC and F90 to your Fortran compiler, and NETCDF to where you want to install NETCDF. Best add to your startup files.
  • ./configure --disable-netcdf4 --disable-dap --prefix=the contents of your NETCDF variable
  • make
  • make install
• MPI (for a distributed memory build only), must be built with the Fortran interface using the same compiler as used for WRF. Make sure mpicc and mpif90 are on the search path.

Step by step directions

• Get WRF-Fire from the repository or a mirror.
• cd wrf-fire/WRFV3
• ./configure, choose nesting 1=basic.
• ./compile em_fire >& compile.log
• Search for Err in compile.log. If not found, all is well.
  • If you see error like mpif90: -f90 option not recognized, edit the file configure.wrf and change the line DM_FC = mpif90 -f90=$(SFC) to read just DM_FC = mpif90 Unfortunately, some versions of MPI crash with the -f90 flag, and some crash without. You will need top repeat this every time after you run ./configure.
• cd test/em_fire/hill
• ./ideal.exe
• ./wrf.exe

Works with

June 2010

• WRF-Fire Jun 12 2010 based on WRF 3.2
• NETCDF 4.1.1
• Linux x64 gfortran/gcc 4.4
• Mac OS X 10.6 gfortran/gcc 4.3 (from Mac Ports)

January 2010

WRF-Fire Nov 15 2009 works with NetCDF 4, MPI 2, and

• PGI Fortran 8.0 and gcc 4.3.4 on Linux Gentoo 5 64bit
• Intel Fortran 11 and gcc 4.4.1 on Fedora 11 64bit
• gfortran/gcc 4.3.4 on Linux Gentoo 5 64bit
• gfortran/gcc 4.3.0 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard