ESMValTool Knowledge Development

The Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) started out as a collection of community-developed diagnostics and performance metrics for the evaluation of Earth System Models. It is built on top of ESMValCore, a Python package for making large (e.g. CMIP6 is 14 PB) climate datasets analysis-ready. The ESMValCore package takes care of finding and optionally downloading the required data, fixing deviations from the standard data format, performing common analysis steps, and running the analysis scripts provided by the tool in parallel. Recently the software has also turned out to be useful for other users of climate data, such as hydrologists and climate change impact researchers. Both software packages have been developed by and for researchers working with climate data, with the support of several research software engineers.

The main goal of this project is to strengthen the ESMValTool community and to create more and better ties to the Dutch research community. A sub-goal is to reduce the memory footprint of the ESMValCore, so larger datasets can be processed, thus keeping the tool relevant by enabling new research opportunities. This will result in a generally applicable tool for making heterogeneous, large climate datasets analysis-ready with a thriving community of contributors.