[MITgcm-devel] portable random number generator

[Andrea Molod]

hi all,

i would like to make a (slight) change in the portable number generator,
port_rand, that is in model/src. i would like to add an argument to the
call which would set the seed for the random number generator (at the
start of each run). without this, reproducibility of the random numbers
between runs with pickups at different times is not possible. 

i see that port_rand is used in the flt package and appears in ini_theta 
for the held-suarez verification experiments, but is not active. so i will
change the code in both of those places to add an argument to the port_rand 
call, and will change port_rand to assign the seed from the dummy argument.

NOTE: the change to the flt package code will duplicate the current behavior 
and re-set the seed to the same value it has now for the start of each run.
to make a run reproducible with flt the choice of seed in that code should
be revisited (ie, set it from myiter, or something like that).

any objections/comments? speak up soon!

andrea

------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrea M. Molod, PhD.
Department of Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences 
MIT
Tel: (617) 253-5458, Email: amolod at mit.edu 
WWW:http://paoc.mit.edu/paoc/people/person.asp?position=Postdoc&who=molod
----------------------------------------------------------------