[develop]: Merge relevant release documentation updates into develop

README.md

@@ -1,18 +1,19 @@
 # UFS Short-Range Weather Application
 
-The Unified Forecast System (UFS) is a community-based, coupled, comprehensive Earth modeling system. It is designed to be the source system for NOAA’s operational numerical weather prediction applications while enabling research, development, and contribution opportunities for the broader Weather Enterprise. For more information about the UFS, visit the UFS Portal at https://ufscommunity.org/.
+The Unified Forecast System (UFS) is a community-based, coupled, comprehensive Earth modeling system. NOAA's operational model suite for numerical weather prediction (NWP) is quickly transitioning to the UFS from a number of different modeling systems. The UFS enables research, development, and contribution opportunities within the broader Weather Enterprise (including government, industry, and academia). For more information about the UFS, visit the UFS Portal at https://ufscommunity.org/.
 
-The UFS includes multiple applications (see a complete list at https://ufscommunity.org/science/aboutapps/) that support different forecast durations and spatial domains. This documentation describes the development branch of the UFS Short-Range Weather (SRW) Application, which targets predictions of atmospheric behavior on a limited spatial domain and on time scales from minutes to several days. The development branch of the application is continually evolving as the system undergoes open development. The latest SRW App release (v2.1.0) represents a snapshot of this continuously evolving system. 
+The UFS includes multiple applications (see a complete list at https://ufscommunity.org/science/aboutapps/) that support different forecast durations and spatial domains. This documentation describes the development branch of the UFS Short-Range Weather (SRW) Application, which targets predictions of atmospheric behavior on a limited spatial domain and on time scales from minutes to several days. The development branch of the application is continually evolving as the system undergoes open development. The latest SRW App release (v2.2.0) represents a snapshot of this continuously evolving system. 
 
-The UFS SRW App User's Guide associated with the development branch is at: https://ufs-srweather-app.readthedocs.io/en/develop/, while the guide specific to the SRW App v2.1.0 release can be found at: https://ufs-srweather-app.readthedocs.io/en/release-public-v2.1.0/. The repository is at: https://github.com/ufs-community/ufs-srweather-app.
+The UFS SRW App User's Guide associated with the development branch is at: https://ufs-srweather-app.readthedocs.io/en/develop/, while the guide specific to the SRW App v2.2.0 release can be found at: https://ufs-srweather-app.readthedocs.io/en/release-public-v2.2.0/. The repository is at: https://github.com/ufs-community/ufs-srweather-app.
 
 For instructions on how to clone the repository, build the code, and run the workflow, see:
-https://github.com/ufs-community/ufs-srweather-app/wiki/Getting-Started
+- https://ufs-srweather-app.readthedocs.io/en/develop/
+- https://github.com/ufs-community/ufs-srweather-app/wiki/Getting-Started
 
 For a debugging guide for users and developers in the field of Earth System Modeling, please see:
 https://epic.noaa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Debugging-Guide.pdf
 
-UFS Development Team. (2022, Nov. 17). Unified Forecast System (UFS) Short-Range Weather (SRW) Application (Version v2.1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7277602
+UFS Development Team. (2023, Oct. 31). Unified Forecast System (UFS) Short-Range Weather (SRW) Application (Version v2.2.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10015544
 
 [![Python unittests](https://github.com/ufs-community/ufs-srweather-app/actions/workflows/python_unittests.yaml/badge.svg)](https://github.com/ufs-community/ufs-srweather-app/actions/workflows/python_unittests.yaml)
 [![Python functional tests](https://github.com/ufs-community/ufs-srweather-app/actions/workflows/python_func_tests.yaml/badge.svg)](https://github.com/ufs-community/ufs-srweather-app/actions/workflows/python_func_tests.yaml)

docs/UsersGuide/source/BackgroundInfo/CCPPUpdates.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,95 @@
+:orphan:
+
+.. _CCPPUpdates:
+
+================================================
+CCPP Updates for the SRW App v2.2.0 Release
+================================================
+
+Here is what's new in CCPP Physics for the UFS SRW v2.2.0 public release. 
+
+General Updates
+=================
+
+* Added RAP suite (``FV3_RAP``) as a new supported suite (documentation `here <https://dtcenter.ucar.edu/GMTB/UFS_SRW_App_v2.2.0/sci_doc/rap_suite_page.html>`__)
+* Added the Community Land Model (CLM) Lake model in the HRRR suite (``FV3_HRRR``)
+
+Thompson Microphysics Scheme
+==============================
+
+* Reduced ice generation supersaturation requirement from 0.25 to 0.15 to generate more ice at the upper levels and reduce the outgoing longwave radiation bias
+* Divided cloud number concentration into two parts (over land and others). Reduced number concentration over ocean to a smaller number (50/L) from its previous default (100/L). Both changes were made to reduce excessive surface downward shortwave radiative flux off coastal regions including the Southeast Pacific
+* Implemented small fixes to the minimum size of snow and collision constants
+
+.. note:: 
+
+   The above improvements were tested with the non-aerosol option, so results with the aerosol-aware Thompson (used in the SRW App) may vary.
+
+
+NoahMP Land Surface Model
+===========================
+
+* Option for using the unified frozen precipitation fraction in NoahMP.
+* Diagnostic 2-meter temperature and humidity now based on vegetation and bare-ground tiles (new namelist option ``iopt_diag``)
+* Bug fixes for GFS-based thermal roughness length scheme
+* New soil color dataset introduced to improve soil albedo to reduce the large warm bias found in the Sahel desert
+* Wet leaf contribution factor is included
+* Leaf-area index now depends on momentum roughness length
+
+
+RUC Land Surface Model
+========================
+
+* Initialization of land and ice emissivity and albedo with consideration of partial snow cover
+* Initialization of water vapor mixing ratio over land ice
+* Initialization of fractions of soil and vegetation types in a grid cell
+* Changes in the computation of a flag for sea ice: set to true only if ``flag_cice=.false`` (atmosphere uncoupled from the sea ice model).
+* Separate variables for sea ice, for example: ``snowfallac`` is replaced with ``snowfallac_ice``
+* Solar angle dependence of albedo for snow-free land
+* Stochastic physics perturbations (SPP) introduced for emissivity, albedo and vegetation fraction
+* Coefficient in soil resistance formulation (Sakaguchi and Zeng, 2009) raised from 0.7 to 1.0 to increase soil resistance to evaporation
+* Computation of snow cover fraction and snow thermal conductivity updated
+
+GFS Scale-Aware TKE-EDMF PBL and Cumulus Schemes
+==================================================
+
+* Parameterization to represent environmental wind shear effect added to reduce excessively high hurricane intensity
+* Entrainment rates enhanced proportionally to the sub-cloud or PBL-mean TKE when TKE is larger than a threshold value
+* Entrainment rate is increased as a function of vegetation fraction and surface roughness length to enhance underestimated CAPE
+
+MYNN-EDMF PBL Scheme
+======================
+
+* Small increase of buoyancy length scale in convective environments
+* Patch for ensuring non-zero cloud fractions for all grid cells where cloud mixing ratio is greater than 1e-6 or ice mixing ratio is greater than 1e-9
+
+Subgrid-Scale (SGS) Clouds Scheme
+===================================
+
+* Bug fix for cloud condensate input into RRTMG radiation
+* New code section for use with SAS convection scheme
+* Cloud fraction now computed as a mix between the area-dependent form and the modified Chaboureau and Bechtold (2005) form
+* Adjusted limit for the boundary flux functions
+
+MYNN Surface-layer Scheme
+===========================
+
+* Reintroduced friction velocity averaging over water to reduce noise in 10-m winds in the hurricane regime
+
+Grell-Freitas Scale and Aerosol Aware Convection Scheme
+=========================================================
+
+* Update for aerosol-awareness (experimental)
+* Scale-awareness turned off when explicit microphysics is not active anywhere in the column
+* Convection is completely suppressed at grid points where the MYNN PBL scheme produces shallow convection
+* Radar reflectivity considers mass flux PDF as well as whether scale-awareness is turned on at the grid point in equation
+
+Unified Gravity Wave Physics Scheme
+=====================================
+
+* Optional diagnostic for tendencies computed. They can be switched on by setting the following namelist variables to ``“.true.”``: ``ldiag3d`` and ``ldiag_ugwp``
+
+
+.. attention:: 
+
+   The improvements in Thompson cloud microphysics, NoahMP land surface model, GFS TKE-EDMF and cumulus schemes were tested in UFS global configuration, so results in the UFS limited-area configuration (SRW) may vary.