Number of nodes affecting branch/restart?

[ckcastillo]

Hi, should the number of nodes and the load balancing scheme affect the smoothness of a restart/branch run?

I ran a spinup using 20 nodes then three branch runs - 2 at 32 nodes and 1 at 20 (due to resource limitations). After doing the diagnostics, I noticed that the last branch run smoothly restarted from the spinup, but the first two that were run with more nodes did not, though they did match each other in the first year.

Thanks!