Horizontal discretization: Spectral element

Vertical discretization: Floating Lagrangian

Domain: Global

Resolution: ne120 (~0.25 degree, 28 km) refined region with ne30 (~1.0 deg, 111 km) base.

Vertical levels: 30 non-uniform, hybrid sigma-pressure (model top ~40km)

Physics timestep: 450 seconds (7.5 minutes)

Physics package: CAMv5.4 physics, prescribed modal aerosols.
Deep convection: Zhang and McFarlane (1995) (ZM)
Shallow convection: Park and Bretherton (2009)
PBL: Bretherton and Park (2009) (UW)
Warm cloud macrophysics: Park et al. (2014)
Cold cloud macrophysics: Gettelman et al. (2010)
Microphysics: Gettelman and Morrison (2014) (MG2)
Radiation: Iacono et al. (2008) (RRTMG)

Initial conditions: GDAS (GFS operational) analysis, digitally filtered (forward DFI) using a Heaviside step function. Fixed, persistent SSTs/ice from GDAS on V-R domain. Land initial conditions spun up using data atmosphere and then incrementally nudged each forecast cycle by previous 12/24 hour forecast.

Land model: CLM 5.0, identical grid as atmosphere

Topography: From ~3km USGS, scale-selectively smoothed with Laplacian filter

CESM tag: CESM 2.0.alpha07

Forecast config. reference: (DOI) C. M. Zarzycki and C. Jablonowski (2015), Experimental tropical cyclone forecasts using a variable-resolution global model. Mon. Weat. Rev., doi:10.1175/MWR-D-15-0159.1