The ACCESS Ice Sheet System Model (ACCESS-ISSM) is an implementation of NASA’s Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM). It is designed for high-resolution, high-performance simulations of ice sheet dynamics, including glacier and ice shelf flow. By leveraging ISSM’s powerful capabilities, ACCESS-ISSM facilitates advanced research into ice sheet behavior, contributing to improved understanding of glaciological processes and their impact on the broader climate system.
This is the Model Deployment Repository for the ACCESS-ISSM model.
There are not yet any officially supported public releases of ACCESS-ISSM.
ACCESS-NRI supports ACCESS-ISSM for the Australian Research Community.
Any questions about ACCESS-NRI releases of ACCESS-ISSM should be done through the ACCESS-Hive Forum. See the ACCESS Help and Support topic for details on how to do this.
ACCESS-NRI is using spack, a build from source package manager designed for use with high performance computing. This repository contains a spack environment manifest file (spack.yaml) that defines all the essential components of the model, including exact versions.
Spack automatically builds all the components and their dependencies, producing model component executables. Spack already contains support for compiling thousands of common software packages. Spack packages for the components are defined in the spack packages repository.
ACCESS-ISSM is built and deployed automatically to gadi on NCI (see below). However it is possible to use spack to compile the model using the spack.yaml environment file in this repository. To do so follow the instructions on for configuring spack on gadi.
Then clone this repository and run the following commands on gadi:
spack env create access-issm spack.yaml
spack env activate access-issm
spack installThis creates a Spack environment called access-issm and builds all the components. Their locations can be found by running:
spack find --pathsACCESS-ISSM is deployed automatically when a new version of the spack.yaml file is committed to main or a dedicated backport/VERSION branch. All the ACCESS-ISSM components are built using spack on gadi and installed under the vk83 project in /g/data/vk83. It is necessary to be a member of vk83 project to use ACCESS-NRI deployments of ACCESS-ISSM.
The deployment process also creates a GitHub release with the same tag. All releases are available under the Releases page. Each release has a changelog and meta-data with detailed information about the build and deployment, including:
- Paths on gadi to all executables built in the deployment process (
spack.location) - A
spack.lockfile, which is a complete build provenance document listing all the components that were built and their dependencies, versions, compiler version, build flags, and build architecture. It is also installable via Spack, similarly to thespack.yaml. - The environment
spack.yamlfile used for deployment
Additionally the deployment creates environment modulefiles, the standard method for deploying software on gadi. To view available ACCESS-ISSM versions:
module use /g/data/vk83/modules
module avail access-issmFor users of ACCESS-ISSM model configurations released by ACCESS-NRI, the exact location of the model executables is not required. Model configurations will be updated with new model components when necessary.
For information on contributing your own fixes to the ACCESS-ISSM spack.yaml, see the Hive Docs article on creating a prerelease.