First, the user must decide on the periodicity (or 'type') of the data that will force the model, for example, an annual mean climatology or a re-analysis product available every day. This choice is specified by the namelist variables *_data_type where * denotes each of ws, shf, sfwf, etc. The options for data_type are:

'none':
no forcing
'analytic':
a time-invariant analytic form for the forcing
'annual':
a time-invariant annual mean forcing
'monthly-equal':
a monthly mean climatology assumed to consist of 12 values that are separated equally in time by 365/12 = 30.4166 days. This was included mostly for backward compatibility.
'monthly-calendar':
a monthly mean climatology whose 12 values correspond to the non-leap-year calendar
'monthly':
synonymous with 'monthly-calendar'
'n-hour':
forcing is specified every 'n' equally spaced hours. If this is chosen, the user must also specify a value for *_data_inc which is the increment (in hours) between consecutive values of the forcing data. For example, ws_data_inc =24 denotes daily wind stress forcing. The value of *_data_inc is disregarded for all of the other *_data_type options.