WhatIs: The start.nc and startphy.nc input files

LMDZ initial condition files

To run, LMDZ requires initial conditions (i.e. values of state variables at a given instant). These are provided as two NetCDF files, start.nc (which contains state variables for the dynamics) and startphy.nc (state variables for the physics). As these files contain information about fields at given grid points, they must be at the same resolution as LMDZ; in other words, the GCM does not do any interpolation of initial conditions which must thus be provided on the exact same grid that the model uses.