Building WRF on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Here is a memo when I built WRF (Weather Research & Forecasting Model) on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on EC2. Basically, I followed the tutorial. You should also check the pages starting from Let’s Get Started.

First, launch your EC2 instance. I used an x86_64 instance, because it failed to build jasper when I used an arm64 instance. You’d need to update its configuration script to support arm64.

First, install these packages.

sudo apt-get install gcc g++ gfortran make csh m4

Then, download a snippet to install dependencies and run it. I’d recommend using -e flag to make it stop when something goes wrong.

wget https://gist.githubusercontent.com/islas/b76171591531d3a06e209cd1ff75840c/raw/15e9000b5092e3eb3413f7fdef40f3962473473a/build_wrf_dependencies.sh
sh -e ./build_wrf_dependencies.sh

You should be able to install some of these dependencies using apt, but this script picks proper versions and flags.

Next, export these environment variables. You can find them at the beginning of build_wrf_dependencies.sh.

DIR=$PWD/wrf_dependencies
export NETCDF=$DIR/netcdf
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$NETCDF/lib:$DIR/grib2/lib
export PATH=$NETCDF/bin:$DIR/mpich/bin:${PATH}
export JASPERLIB=$DIR/grib2/lib
export JASPERINC=$DIR/grib2/include

Now, clone WRF and run configure.

git clone https://github.com/wrf-model/WRF.git
cd WRF
./configure

I chose 34 (GNU (gfortran/gcc) - dmpar) when it asked Please select from among the following Linux x86_64 options:, and chose 1 (basic) to Compile for nesting?.

Once it’s configured, build it.

./compile em_real > build.log 2>&1
cd ..

I made a mistake to run make instead of ./compile, which launched too many make processes and ended up eating too much memory. Use the ./compile script instead.

Once you’ve built WRF, build WPS.

git clone https://github.com/wrf-model/WPS.git
cd WPS
./configure

I chose 1 (Linux x86_64, gfortran (serial)) when it asked Please select from among the following supported platforms..

./compile > build.log 2>&1
cd ..

Download the static geography data once you’ve built both WRF and WPS. You can find its details at WPS V4 Geographical Static Data Downloads Page.

wget https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/src/wps_files/geog_high_res_mandatory.tar.gz
tar zxf geog_high_res_mandatory.tar.gz

Then, patch your namelist.wps.

(cd WPS && patch -p 1 <<END
diff --git a/namelist.wps b/namelist.wps
index 8289caa..a94dd92 100644
--- a/namelist.wps
+++ b/namelist.wps
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@
  truelat1  =  30.0,
  truelat2  =  60.0,
  stand_lon = -79.0,
- geog_data_path = '/glade/work/wrfhelp/WPS_GEOG/'
+ geog_data_path = '/home/ubuntu/WPS_GEOG/'
 /

 &ungrib
END
)

I assumed you were building them at /home/ubuntu.

Now, let’s build ARWpost. First, download and extract it. Then, run ./configure.

wget https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/src/ARWpost_V3.tar.gz
tar zxf ARWpost_V3.tar.gz
cd ARWpost
./configure

I chose 3 (PC Linux i486 i586 i686 x86_64, gfortran compiler) when it asked Please select from among the following supported platforms..

Now, you need to patch src/Makefile to link netcdff in addition to netcdf. Also patch configure.arwp to make C pre-processor to omit C-style comments in fortran source files, and pass -fallow-argument-mismatch to gfortran.

cp src/Makefile src/Makefile.orig
sed -i -e 's/-lnetcdf/-lnetcdff -lnetcdf/g' src/Makefile
cp configure.arwp configure.arwp.orig
sed -i -e 's/-C -P/-P/g' configure.arwp
sed -i -e 's/-frecord-marker=4/-frecord-marker=4 -fallow-argument-mismatch/' configure.arwp

Once you have done that, run ./compile to build it.

./compile

ARWpost generates files that GrADS reads. So you’ll probably want to install GrDAS to render them.

sudo apt-get install grads