ESMValTool integration

[eguil]

Dear Eric and Yann,

Thanks for your email. Just to clarify: we were not asking for a detailed documentation but rather some guidelines on (a) software installation and (b) how to actually run the tool. Maybe Yann can help with this and send us a brief instruction?

We have now looked at the code in some more detail. One difficulty is that pre-processing, configuration settings, and diagnostics are spread across different routines. This makes an implementation of the ENSO metrics package into the ESMValTool difficult at this stage.

However, the restructuring of the ENSO package that you are planning will certainly be very helpful. In order to make the implementation into the ESMValTool as easy and as consistent with our standard work flow we would recommend splitting the ENSO metrics package code into three parts (if possible):

(1) Pre-processing of input data (including checks, unit conversion, etc.)
(2) Configuration settings (this would form the basis for a wrapper for the ESMValTool)
(3) Diagnostics (actual calculations)

As mentioned, we do not intend to include UVCDAT in the ESMValTool. Hopefully this part can be put into a separate pre-processing part, so when the ENSO package is run via the ESMValTool, the pre-processing could be done by the ESMValTool package instead.

We could then write an ESMValTool namelist and a wrapper that passes all information needed (“configuration”) from the ESMValTool to the ENSO package and then calls the diagnostic part (i.e. the actual calculation of the metrics).

This will ensure that the ENSO package remains a standalone package and new versions of it can easily be integrated into the ESMValTool. We would include a certain version of the ENSO package into the ESMValTool repository alongside with a wrapper and once you have a new release in the ENSO GitHub repository, we could easily update to it.

For the telecon next week, it is not completely clear to us what should be discussed. The next steps seem to be mostly of technical nature but if this is helpful we could explain in some more details why we think the above is important.

Best wishes,

Veronika, Axel, Mattia and Sabrina

[eguil]

Telco Yann, Veronika, Axel, Eric - 20 Feb 2018:

Agreed work plan:

• provide details/concepts of 3 points above [Axel by March 1st]
• analysis of document [Yann and Eric by March 9th]
• possibly change interface following analysis and further telcos and exchanges [by March 15th]
• then implement code into ESMValTool
• always copy Sabrina, Axel and Veronika for all emails