[CIG-ALL] CitcomS 3.1.0 release

[Eh Tan]

Hi,

CIG is pleased to announce release of CitcomS 3.1.0. CitcomS is a finite 
element code designed to solve thermo-chemical convection problems
relevant to Earth's mantle.


This release of CitcomS contains many new features, including:

* Converting temperature and composition to seismic velocities. The seismic
  velocities output can be uploaded to CIG seismic portal for SPECFEM3D
  simulation to generate synthetic seismograms. See Cookbook 10 in the
  manual.
 
* Allowing tracers in global model with nproc > 2 by changing the mesh
  slightly.

* The convergence of Stokes solver is controlled by parameter "accuracy" in
  [CitcomS.solver.vsolver]. "tole_compressibility" is not used anymore.
  Also, the norms of div(u), u, and p are no longer dependent on the grid
  size.

* Adding self-gravitational effect on geoid, contributed by Shijie Zhong.
  See Cookbook 8 in the manual.

* Adding Consistent-Boundary-Flux (CBF) method to compute dynamic
  topography, contributed by Shijie Zhong. See Cookbook 8 in the manual.

* Better convergence for the nested solver calculation. See Cookbook 9
  in the manual.

* Adding GMT/netcdf grd input for surface velocity boundary conditions,
  initial temperature, material dependence and local Rayleigh number in
  surface layers, contributed by Thorsten Becker.

* Adding capability to read in time- and geographic-dependent, top surface
  temperature boundary conditions, contributed by Mike Gurnis.

* Allowing multi-component chemical viscosity.

* Optimizing the speed. Cookbook 8 becomes 13% faster than v3.0.3.

* Moving input parameter "mantle_temp" from [CitcomS.solver.param] to
  [CitcomS.solver.ic] section.

* visual/project_geoid starts from degree-2 spherical harmonics.

* Fixed several bugs in the code and manual. Important bug fix includes:

  - A memory bug in visual/project_geoid.c, fixed by Thorsten Becker.

  - Initial temperature "tic_method=0" for regional model applied
    sinusoidal perturbations to 0th processor only.
  
  - Initial temperature "tic_method=1" for regional model generated a top
    thermal boundary layer 25x older than specfied by "half_space_age".

  - Compiling with both HDF5 and Exchanger support will crash Cookbook 9
    (Issue 528).

  - Insufficient error checking when reading input files (Issue 265,
    reported by Clint Conrad).

  - Installation bug: Python.h and system header not properly checked by
    configure script (Isse 45, reported by Vlad Manea and Ricardo Arevalo).

  - Installation bug: Python.h and system header not properly checked by
    configure script (Isse 45, reported by Vlad Manea and Ricardo Arevalo).

  - Manual fixes: description of rheol=4 (Isse 152, reported by James
    Robert), energy equation (Issue 162 & 164, reported by Dan Bower),
    documented all "tic_method" and "rheol" options.



Known issue:

Some machines use an MPI implementation (e.g. MVAPICH on TACC TeraGrid)
that does not support system call. As a result, the compressed ASCII
(ascii-gz) output does not work on those machines. Please use other
output formats (ascii, hdf5) on those machines.


Please check the NEWS and ChangeLog files for more details.

The code and user manual can be downloaded from:

http://www.geodynamics.org/cig/software/packages/mc/citcoms

-- 
Eh Tan
Staff Scientist
Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics
California Institute of Technology, 158-79
Pasadena, CA 91125
(626) 395-1693
http://www.geodynamics.org