Training

To begin working with the JULES land surface model, it is best to work through a tutorial. Various tutorials have been kindly contributed by various people over the years, and I (Toby) have collected together all the ones I know of here below. However, I recommend to have a look at my Getting Started pages before starting any of these tutorials.

Please note that Toby does not have any information on any other tutorials: As of 2026, there is no formal training*** provided by the UK Met Office or UKCEH (some of the webpages about core and research-community configurations do contain useful information about running some configurations - e.g. the ISIMIP suite or JULES-ES - but they universally assume that users already know how to run the model).

A note about JULES on a Laptop: Toby does not recommend running JULES on a Mac or Windows laptop: it should be possible, but large runs will be relatively slow (and parallel runs may be impossible). Most users run JULES on an HPC (i.e., a larger computer), e.g. JASMIN. Anyone working in the area of Environmental Sciences can get a JASMIN login, so I would recommend to apply for that and see whether this is a feasible option first. I have put details about JASMIN on a page on my website at https://www.tobymarthews.com/jules-on-jasmin.html .

* Coupled JULES refers to any coupled configuration using more than one element of the Momentum Framework, including those used by the projects UKESM and UM/JULES

** There are some additional documents that are very useful for JULES-Standalone, e.g. this very useful doc about TRIFFID attached to JULES ticket #592 https://code.metoffice.gov.uk/trac/jules/attachment/ticket/592/veg_options_note.pdf .

*** Note that I have carefully said that there is no "formal" training available: many people at the UKMO and UKCEH have the knowledge, but they have not got it in a form that they can send it to me and I can upload it here. This means that you need to convince someone to informally sit down with you and simply show you how to use a particular JULES suite/configuration.

• The JULES TRAC has been retired since late 2025, but it is still accessible and contains a number of information pages and self-teach tutorials (e.g. Rose JULES on JASMIN) as well as useful pages like the JULES Tip of the Day, JULESWithRose, JULESRosePractical and UsingGriddedDatasets.
• January 2019: JULES WORKSHOP IN EXETER (based on JULESvn5.3).
• September 2018: JULES WORKSHOP IN EXETER (based on JULESvn5.2).
• September 2018: Edward Comyn-Platt's JULES Tutorial youtube series. These use the same basic data (all based on JULESvn5.2): JULES Tutorial 1 (Check Out and Go): The single-site Loobos example (using suite u-bb219). JULES Tutorial 2 (Spin Me Round): Single-site Loobos with a spin-up added in. JULES Tutorial 3 (Go Green): Single-site Loobos with dynamic vegetation.
• July 2017: Charlie Williams wrote an Idiot's guide to Rose/Cylc for JULES on JASMIN (note from Toby: this tutorial refers to my suite u-ai227 and branch vn4.8_testHoT, both of which have since been deleted).
• 2016 TRAINING AT LANCASTER by Toby Marthews and others at CEH/MetO (based on JULESvn4.8).
• Alberto Martínez's practical 2 from the 2016 JULES Short Course based on the River Thames, U.K. (based on JULESvn4.5)
• GSWP2 example from December 2014 UsingGriddedDatasets (based on JULESvn4.1). This is worth reading, but note that the driving data for the example it describes are not provided and you can't actually run it without acquiring those files (and Toby doesn't have them). It's possible that the required files are very similar to the GSWP2 files still used for Rose Stem testing (see here), but Toby is not quite certain of that.
• 2012 training at Exeter by Matt Pryor (based on JULESvn3.2)
• 2010 training at Wallingford by Douglas Clark (based on JULESvn2.1.2)

I believe that some of these are still worth going through to pick up tips, but n.b. they do not refer to (and therefore cannot help with) the latest versions of JULES.