[BUG/ISSUE] Cannot run GEOS-Chem Classic continuously across year boundary

[lizziel]

When running GEOS-Chem Classic across a year boundary I get the following run-time error:

HISTORY (INIT): Opening ./HISTORY.rc
=====================================================================
GEOS-Chem ERROR: No diagnostic output will be created for collection: 
"Restart"!  Make sure that the length of the simulation as specified in 
"input.geos" (check the start and end times) is not shorter than the frequency 
setting in HISTORY.rc!  For example, if the frequency is 010000 (1 hour) but 
the simulation is set up to run for only 20 minutes, then this error will occur.
 -> at History_ReadCollectionData (in module History/history_mod.F90)

 -> ERROR occurred at (or near) line     70 of the HISTORY.rc file
=====================================================================

=====================================================================
GEOS-Chem ERROR: Error encountered in "History_ReadCollectionData"!
 -> at History_Init (in module History/history_mod.F90)
=====================================================================

=====================================================================
GEOS-CHEM ERROR: Error encountered in "History_Init"!
STOP at  -> at GEOS-Chem (in GeosCore/main.F90)
=====================================================================

For this particular run my settings in input.geos are as follows:

Start YYYYMMDD, hhmmss  : 20151231 230000
End   YYYYMMDD, hhmmss  : 20160101 000000

I tested various combinations of start and end dates and consistently have this error ONLY if the start and end have a change in year. The quick fix is to edit HISTORY.rc to change all instances of frequency and duration set as 'End' to be a specific time duration, such as 010000 (hourly).

We will look into a longer term solution to put into a future version.

[yantosca]

Thanks for letting us know about this issue. I see what is happening. I set up a 2-day transport tracer simulation (12/31/15 to 1/2/16) that straddles the new year. The simulation length = 2 days = 176400 sec. But the file write alarm is 3153600 seconds, because this is computed from the start of the current year (2015).

I think the fix is to test if you straddle a year, and then subtract off the number of seconds in that year. That will reduce the filewritealarm. Apparently this is an edge case that I didn't foresee. I'll work on a fix now. Stay tuned.

The error happens for the Restart collection, which has frequency "end"

[yantosca]

This issue is now resolved by commit 2fcf78e. We have added an extra check to make sure that the FileWriteAlarm for containers with freq=End are computed properly.