gridclimind: gridclimind, a package to calculate Climdex indices from...

In ECA-D/ecad_indices_grid: Functions to compute CLIMIND indices over a NetCDF grid

gridclimind, a package to calculate Climdex indices from NetCDF files.

Description

This package implements code to facilitate computation of Climdex indices from NetCDF input files.

Details

The Climdex climate extremes indices have historically been calculated using Fortran code. This has a number of problems:

• Difficult to test

• Difficult to modify (for instance, to add NetCDF file I/O)

• Difficult to parallelize

The climind package provides an easy interface to efficient computation of Climdex indices. This package is complementary to it, providing easy access to functions to compute indices in parallel, using NetCDF files as input and output. It implements chunked processing of input files to keep memory usage reasonable; it implements parallel computation using the snow library; and it includes a test suite to verify correctness of the implementation. Furthermore, the package has a modular design, allowing for easy extension to allow for adaptation to changing or custom requirements. For example, the metadata is stored in json files that are included with the package. This allows the core of the code to separate from the metadata details, for example allowing one to switch on-the-fly.

Users of this package should pay particular attention to the create.indices.from.files function, which computes Climdex indices given NetCDF input files; and create.thresholds.from.file, which computes thresholds for use with threshold-based indices given NetCDF input files. Many of the other functions exposed by the package are intended to provide for extensibility, but are unlikely to be routinely used by users of this package.

References

http://etccdi.pacificclimate.org/list_27_indices.shtml

Karl, T.R., N. Nicholls, and A. Ghazi, 1999: CLIVAR/GCOS/WMO workshop on indices and indicators for climate extremes: Workshop summary. Climatic Change, 42, 3-7.

Peterson, T.C., and Coauthors: Report on the Activities of the Working Group on Climate Change Detection and Related Rapporteurs 1998-2001. WMO, Rep. WCDMP-47, WMO-TD 1071, Geneve, Switzerland, 143pp.

Zhang, X., 2005: Avoiding inhomogeneity in percentile-based indices of temperature extremes. Journal of Climate 18.11 (2005):1641-.

See Also

create.indices.from.files, create.thresholds.from.file

ECA-D/ecad_indices_grid documentation built on Nov. 23, 2022, 6:04 a.m.