10.6    The Common Community Physics Package CCPP: Unifying physics across NOAA and NCAR models using a common software framework.

Heinzeller, Dom, NOAA ESRL – Global Systems Division (NOAA/ESRL/GSD) and University of Colorado Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CU/CIRES) and Developmental Testbed Center (DTC), Grant Firl, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and DTC, Ligia Bernardet, NOAA/ESRL/GSD and CU/CIRES and DTC, Laurie Carson, NCAR and DTC, Man Zhang, NOAA/ESRL/GSD and CU/CIRES and DTC, Steve Goldhaber, Cheryl Craig, Dave Gill, Michael Duda, and Francis Vitt, NCAR

Years of independent development work have led to largely incompatible model components among the different U.S. agencies. To facilitate the transition of innovations from the research community to operations, the Global Model Test Bed (GMTB) with staff at NOAA and NCAR has been tasked to develop a collection of physical parameterizations and a software framework, called the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP). Recently, an agreement was made between NOAA and NCAR to jointly develop the CCPP framework as part of their Unified Forecasting System (UFS) and System for Integrated Modeling Architecture (SIMA) programs. This places the CCPP in the heart of several of the U.S. flagship models as a single, standardized way to interface physics with models of the atmosphere (and other compartments of the Earth system).
In this contribution, we will provide a brief overview of the concept of the CCPP, present its technical design and the requirements for parameterizations to be considered as CCPP-compliant, and describe the integration of CCPP with the host model. We will touch upon the challenges in creating a flexible modeling framework while maintaining high computational performance, and demonstrate how the joint development has benefited and will continue to benefit its users.