Met. Office Unified Model Naming Convention

Introduction

The Met Office are standardising the way their Unified Model should be referred to, and this page describes the changes

Statement from the Met Office

Met Office Model Naming

The wider use of the Met Office Unified Model outside the Met Office and concerns about the identification of model configurations has prompted a rethink about how we name our models. To be consistent with Met Office's policies on brand management, the promotion of the Met Office and Met Office Hadley Centre as part of the Met Office, please implement the following changes with immediate effect. Licensing agreements with model users should also specify this use of names. 

Met Office Unified Model
The Met Office Unified Model is a registered trademark. The Met Office must be acknowledged in any reproduction of data, publication of papers, reports, literature to customers or presentations arising out of the use of the software using: "Met Office Unified ModelTM (UK)".

MetUM
"MetUM" may be used as a subsequent abbreviation of "Met Office Unified Model" in any reproduction of data, publication of papers, reports, literature to customers or presentations arising out of the use of the Software .

MetUM framework
The umbrella name "Met Office Unified Model framework" or "MetUM framework" should be used to cover model systems based around the use of the Unified Model. This includes the UM atmosphere model (plus 4DVar, single column model, etc), NEMO ocean model, CICE sea ice model, earth system components, etc.

Within the MetUM framework we should distinguish between:

• versions which describes code releases of each of the model components
• configurations which describes a specific combination of models at particular versions.
  

Configurations of the MetUM framework
Existing names (for example HadCM3, HadGEM2-ES, HiGEM) can continue to be used to identify configurations of the MetUM framework both internally and externally. Examples of how this should be used:

• In titles and abstracts of papers e.g. '… the latest climate configuration of MetUM: HadGEM2-ES', '… the latest NWP configuration of MetUM' or '… the latest Australian ACCESS configuration of MetUM'
  
• Within the body of the paper the configuration name should be used e.g. HadGEM2-ES.
  
• Configuration descriptions should specify which version of the individual components are used (eg, HadGEM2-AO is a configuration of the MetUM framework; it comprises of UM atmosphere version 6.4 with {describe choices within that version} coupled to NEMO version 2 with {describe choices within that version}).
  

Documentation

The BADC has prepared an overview of the dataset, describing the model and outlining the of the data.The document contains a section on technical aspects of using the data held at the BADC, including acquiring the data, the data format, coverage, resolution, and software to read the files and display the data.

• Unified Model dataset description.
• History of the Unified Model

Links

• The Joint Centre for Mesoscale Meteorology (JCMM) at Reading University.
• The UWERM UM documentation at Reading University.
• The PUM (Portable Unified Model) source code is also available from the BADC for registered UM data users as a dataset (registration required).

Citation

NWP Data Products (UM) UK Meteorological Office. Operational NWP Data Products (UM), [Internet]. British Atmospheric Data Centre, 2001, Date of citation. Available from http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/um

Who to Contact

General queries about these pages and access to the data should be directed to the BADC support line. Your query should be answered within one working day. When follow-up work is required, the BADC support will carry out the work as quickly and efficiently as possible, and in any case, the user will be kept informed of progress.