PIRCS Participant Information

Participation in PIRCS is open to all modeling groups willing to perform the simulations and furnish the output in a standard format. PIRCS supplies boundary conditions for the atmosphere as well as sea surface temperatures and an initial soil moisture field. In order to perform a controlled experiment all participants must use these data for initial and boundary conditions (with interpolation to your model's horizontal and vertical grid). Please see the PIRCS home page for links to additional information on the boundary conditions and output archive.

It is very important for all project participants to adhere as closely as possible to the specifications for the output archive. Departures from the specified format may lead to delays in processing your results. Since our resources for analyzing the data are limited, we reserve the right not to process results that depart substantially from the archive specifications.

All project participants are responsible for securing their own computer time and other resources for running the simulations. Computational resources needed for PIRCS Experiment 1 can be estimated assuming two 60-day simulations of roughly the continental United States at mesoscale resolution (approximately 100 by 70 horizontal grid points at 60 km spacing). Although we cannot provide direct support to participants, the PIRCS coordinators at Iowa State University will entertain requests for endorsements or letters of support for computing requests or funding proposals.

PIRCS participants meet approximately twice per year, usually in conjunction with a professional meeting (such as AMS or AGU), to report progress, discuss problems of mutual interest, and plan for jointly authored publications. Reports of past meetings and announcements of upcoming meetings are linked from the PIRCS home page. PIRCS does not supply funding for participants' travel.

If you have specific question about PIRCS, you are welcome to email the project coordinators at pircs@iastate.edu.