Running

ESMValTool is mostly used as a command line tool. Whenever your conda environment for ESMValTool is active, you can just run the command esmvaltool. See running esmvaltool in the ESMValCore documentation for a short introduction.

Running a recipe

An example recipe is available in the ESMValTool installation folder as examples/recipe_python.yml.

This recipe finds data from CanESM2 and MPI-ESM-LR for 2000 - 2002, extracts a single level (850 hPa), regrids it to a 1x1 degree mesh and runs a diagnostic script that creates some plots of Air temperature and precipitation flux. You can download the recipe from github and save it in your project directory as (e.g.) recipe_python.yml and then run ESMValTool with

esmvaltool run recipe_python.yml --synda-download

The --synda-download option tells ESMValTool to use Synda to search for and download the necessary datasets.

ESMValTool will also find recipes that are stored in its installation directory. A copy of the example recipe is shipped with ESMValTool as: /path/to/installation/esmvaltool/recipes/examples/recipe_python.yml. Thus, the following also works:

esmvaltool run examples/recipe_python.yml

Note that this command does not call Synda. The required data should thus be located in the directories specified in your user configuration file. Recall that the chapter Configuring ESMValTool provides an explanation of how to create your own config-user.yml file.

To get help on additional commands, please use

esmvaltool --help

It is also possible to get help on specific commands, e.g.

esmvaltool run --help

will display the help message with all options for the run command.

There is a step-by-step description available in the ESMValTool tutorial on how to run your first recipe. It can be found here.

Available diagnostics and metrics

See Section Recipes for a description of all available recipes.

To see a list of installed recipes run

esmvaltool recipes list

Running multiple recipes

It is possible to run more tha one recipe in one go: currently this relies on the user having access to a HPC that has rose and cylc installed since the procedure involves installing and submitting a Rose suite. the utility that allows you to do this is esmvaltool/utils/rose-cylc/esmvt_rose_wrapper.py.

Base suite:

The base suite to run esmvaltool via rose-cylc is u-bd684; you can find this suite in the Met Office Rose repository at:

https://code.metoffice.gov.uk/svn/roses-u/b/d/6/8/4/trunk/

When rose will be working with python3.x, this location will become default and the pipeline will aceess it independently of user, unless, of course the user will specify -s $SUITE_LOCATION; until then the user needs to grab a copy of it in $HOME or specify the default location via -s option.

Environment:

We will move to a unified and centrally-installed esmvaltool environment; until then, the user will have to alter the env_setup script:

u-bd684/app/esmvaltool/env_setup

with the correct pointers to esmvaltool installation, if desired.

To be able to submit to cylc, you need to have the /metomi/ suite in path AND use a python2.7 environment. Use the Jasmin-example below for guidance.

Jasmin-example:

This shows how to interact with rose-cylc and run esmvaltool under cylc using this script:

export PATH=/apps/contrib/metomi/bin:$PATH
export PATH=/home/users/valeriu/miniconda2/bin:$PATH
mkdir esmvaltool_rose
cd esmvaltool_rose
cp ESMValTool/esmvaltool/utils/rose-cylc/esmvt_rose_wrapper.py .
svn checkout https://code.metoffice.gov.uk/svn/roses-u/b/d/6/8/4/trunk/ ~/u-bd684
[enter Met Office password]
[configure ~/u-bd684/rose_suite.conf]
[configure ~/u-bd684/app/esmvaltool/env_setup]
python esmvt_rose_wrapper.py -c config-user.yml \
-r recipe_autoassess_stratosphere.yml recipe_OceanPhysics.yml \
-d $HOME/esmvaltool_rose
rose suite-run u-bd684

Note that you need to pass FULL PATHS to cylc, no . or .. because all operations are done remotely on different nodes.

A practical actual example of running the tool can be found on JASMIN: /home/users/valeriu/esmvaltool_rose. There you will find the run shell: run_example, as well as an example how to set the configuration file. If you don’t have Met Office credentials, a copy of u-bd684 is always located in /home/users/valeriu/roses/u-bd684 on Jasmin.