.. CliMAF documentation master file, created by sphinx-quickstart on Thu Nov 6 23:20:27 2014. You can adapt this file completely to your liking, but it should at least contain the root `toctree` directive. Quick links : :ref:`News ` | :ref:`Functions ` | :ref:`standard_operators` | :ref:`howto` | :ref:`examples` | :ref:`contents` .. |logo| image:: Logo-CliMAF-compact.png :scale: 60% |logo| CliMAF - a Climate Model Assessment Framework ======================================================== CliMAF is an `Open Source software `_, distributed with a GPL-compatible licence. See :doc:`the licence notice `. It is available at `CliMAF GitHub repository `_ The aim of CliMAF is to allow for an actual, **easy, collaborative development of climate model outputs assessment suites by climate scientists with varied IT background**, and to ultimately share such suites for the benefit of the Climate Science. So, CliMAF can be described as : - an aid for handling access to common climate simulations and re-analysis datafiles, and to personnal data files, in a uniform way - a wrapper which provides you with uniform, handy, combination and caching features around : - **your own** post-processing and analysis **scripts and programs** - other tools sets such as `NCO `_ and `CDO `_ operators - a way to share advanced climate diagnostic modules - an actual repository for such modules - and a visualisation engine for the corresponding results Description ---------------- CliMAF is basically a Python-scriptable way to process NetCDF `CF compliant `_ climate model outputs which allows: - to almost *forget about accessing input data* : you refer to 'variables' in 'simulations', CliMAF knows a bunch of data organization schemes, you just quote some root locations, usually in configuration files ; [ under development : data can also be on the `ESGF `_ ] - **to apply diagnostics (i.e. any post-processing module) coded in any langage**, provided they meet very minimal requirements, such as described in section :ref:`operators` ; they can be : - either binaries, which accepts command-line arguments, read NetCDF files, and output NetCDF files or graphics (yet only in PNG format) - or Python function which accept Masked Arrays data structure as inputs and outputs - to easily **pipe and combine such diagnostic** binaries or functions - to describe the piping using Python scripting, thus building formal expressions in a simple syntax (called **CRS** for CliMAF Reference Syntax) - to trigger CRS expression computation only once needed - to handle a cache of results, which access keys are CRS expressions A very low-profile knowledge of Python is enough to take full advantage of CliMAF Documentation ---------------- An overview of basic tasks is provided by :ref:`the first items of the howto section ` A top level table of contents show below, and a full one at :ref:`contents` There are also some direct access tools : :ref:`search`, :ref:`genindex` , :ref:`modindex` Content ---------- See the full, extended table at :ref:`contents` .. _mastertoc: .. toctree:: :maxdepth: 1 license requirements installing examples operators std_operators known_data API howto experts_corner contributing news future_steps community