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ExtData Next Generation User Guide
- 1 MAPL Version to Use
- 2 Overview
- 3 General function of ExtData
- 4 Configuration File
Table of contents generated with markdown-toc
ExtData2G is available from MAPL 2.19.0 on, however, you should use MAPL 2.20.0 as the initial 2.19.0 release had multiple bugs that were fixed with the 2.20.0 release. In addition the 2.20.0 release has all the features described below.
This is an overview of the new ExtData Next Generation component (ExtDataNG), a replacement for the ExtData component in the MAPL library. ExtDataNG has several goals:
- Maintainability - the existing component (
ExtData) was developed in rather haphazard fashion historically making code maintenance difficult. - Improve the input format - likewise the input format has no flexibility and is pretty much inextensible for new options. The upshot is that as options were added they were crammed into the existing format in a less than logical way.
- Likewise adding new functionality was becoming increasingly difficult because of the input format.
- There was no way to just leave an option out and use the default value that would probably be sufficient in many cases.
The primary differences from the user perspective aare:
- The input file will use the YAML format rather than the ESMF config format with a more clear and logical format.
- Rather than concatenating files to a master file that is sequentially parsed, each input file can itself have a list of other input files that get recursively parsed internally into a master list of dataset and rules for filling the input fields to the component.
ExtData is a MAPL component that can provide data from external files. The component receives a list of fields. It then has a list of rules to fill those fields from a time varying sequence of files which is assumes contains no gaps. Each time it runs, based on the rules it first checks if the user wants to even try to update the field at the current time, if so it fills it generally either from the last value in the past or interpolates to the current time, transforming the external data to the application grid if needed. It also has options in cases when the time may fall outside of the dataset such as persisting the closest value either in the future or past or using the closest FULL year of data as a climatology.
The input file is currently defaulted to be "extdata.yaml". The input file for ExtDataNG relies on the YAML format, using the ESMF_HConfig library for parsing in Fortran. It is recommended that the users of this version of ExtData take a little time to familiarize themselves with YAML syntax. The ESMF_HConfig parser supports both flow and block styles. Note that many of the keywords are optional. If so the that will be noted along with the default in this document. Finally any options that represent time or time intervals will use the ISO 8601 time standard. For times this is something like 2000-01-01T21:00:00 and for time duration this is something like P1Y1M1DT1D1M0S. The input format consists of the following sections.
The input file may contain a list of other files that may be specified with the subconfigs keyword that specifies a list.
subconfigs: [file1, file2, file3]
or
subconfigs:
- file1
- file2
- file3
Each file is parsed recursively to single dictionaries of sampling parameters, collections and exports internally. This is merely there for the convenience of the user to avoid the problems with a single monolithic file. One thing to keep in mind then is that if you have ANY DUPLICATE/IDENTICAL KEY NAME IN ANY OF THE FILES THAT GET PARSED IS AN ERROR.
This section defines a list of datasets that can be used by the rules. This allows multiple rules to use the dataset. By dataset we mean a file or files representing a time series of data. In addition, the user may specify a valid time range for the files. This is currently necessary to either extrapolate or persist data outside of the dataset as the the component needs to know this information to make decisions. In the future this functionality to detect this may be added but since this requires disk access it is faster if you the user just tells it, after all you took the time to make the data so you had to know this in the first place!
If you don't specify the valid range, ExtData will try to find a file near the current time using what information can be obtained from just the units of the file frequency (but not the value). For example if your file template has something like mytemplate_%y4%d2.nc4, without any other information all it can determine is that you POSSIBLY have a file for each day, but not for sure that you have one for each date and certainly the code can not know for how many days you have a file without literally inquiring about every possible file name. The bottom line is, the free times are over; if you have a dataset and want to use data from it when your application is outside of the dataset range, you have to tell it what the range is. The only exception is the simple case that your template has no tokens in it. Other than that you had better provide this information, if you don't and try to do anything outside the dataset it will crash!
Collections:
dataset1:
template: character string
ref_time: optional, character string
freq: optional, character string
valid_range: optional, character string
-
template- grads style character string specifying the file template path for the dataset -
ref_time- optional ISO time. This is used in conjunction with file frequency if the dataset frequency and reference time from that can't be specified by the application start time + the tokens in the template. By default this is the start time of the application. -
freq- optional ISO time duration used to specify frequency of the dataset. By default this is "guessed" from the file template based on the right most token. -
valid_range- character string of form "IOS time 1/ISO time 2" specify the valid range of times for the dataset. You are telling the application that you should be able to find a valid file on disk by applying any time between that range to the template (within the constraints of the reference time and reference frequency of course). This does not mean you have to use all the data, this is simply telling you what is available. This is only needed if you need to perform some option that extrapolates outside of the range of the data. Right now this can be detected in limited cases (no tokens in the template), detection in general is yet to be implemented. Obviously could be expensive as there is really no way but brute forcing this without help from the user.
The rules sections consists of a key/value mapping where the key is a label referred to by the export and the value is the list of options that relate to temporal handling of the data. This controls the following behaviors; when to update the Export, whether to interpolate to the current time or persist the last value from the dataset in the past, and what to do if the current time lies outside range of the data (either because of the dataset definition or the source time, also note to make use of this option the user must provide information about the timespan of the dataset, see collection section). By default the field will be updated every time ExtData's run method is called, data will be interpolated to the current time, and what to do if the current time lies outside the dataset (either because of the time range defined for the data or BECAUSE THE USER DID NOT PROVIDE SO WE CAN NOT KNOW WHAT THE IS THE VALID RANGE). If the user wishes for the field to be updated at some other frequency this can be accomplished with the udpate_reference_time and update_frequency keywords. The user can also provide an offset applied to the current time when making decisions in the ExtData run method. Finally the user also can set a source time to restrict usage of the dataset to a smaller window. They may want to do this, for example to reproduce a forecast, where you want to persist the data past a date even if you now have data. Or maybe you have a mutliyear dataset and you want to treat a single year as a climatology.
To summarize the following keywords, extrapolation and source_time define HOW to sample when outside the dataset and the other four involve WHEN to sample.
Samplings:
sample_label:
extrapolation: optional, character string
source_time: optional, character string
time_interpolation: optional, logical
update_reference_time: optional, character string
update_frequency: optional, character string
update_offset: optional, character string
exact: optional, logical
-
extrapolation- how to handle extrapolation outside of dataset, options "none" (default, if no data found that is bounded by the dataset fail), "clim" (treat first or last FULL year of the dataset as a climatology), "persist_closest" (simply persist the closest value if outside of the dataset, obviously this turns off time interpolation) -
time_interpolation- logical, apply time interpolation (default true) or if false, persist last value in the past. Note that you will still see it updating the left and right brackets, this is needed to know when to swap, but rest assured, it is persisting the left bracket or last value in the past. -
update_reference_time- Reference time used in conjunction with frequency to determine when the pointer is updated, by default this is the application start time. -
update_frequency- ISO time duration, the frequency that the pointer will be updated, default is every time ExtData runs -
update_offset- ISO time duration representing an offset applied to the current time when updating the pointer. Note the offset has NO effect on WHEN the pointer gets updated. This is an offset applied to the current time once it has been decided that it is time to update the pointer. -
source_time- restrict usage of dataset to this time range specified as "IOS time 1/ISO time 2", if outside of this range use the rules for extrapolation outside of dataset. Example use would be to use a single year from a multiple year dataset as climatology. Obviously this must be a subset of the valid range of data in the file. Another obvious use is to reproduce a forecast (maybe now you have data, but what to simulate the time you did not have it) -
exact- new from v2.32.0, when filling the field in the file interpolate step, only use the data if the time is exactly the time the data exists on disk, otherwise set the field to MAPL_UNDEF. Note this is different from setting time_interpolation to false, as if you set time_interpolation to false, it just sets the value to the last bracket in the past where as this is more draconian and sets it to data you should not use.
The rule consists of a key/value mapping where the key is the name of the import to be filled (variable_name_in_field) and the value is the list of options for that key.
Exports:
variable_name_in_field:
collection: character string
variable: character string
linear_transformation: optional, list of 2 real number
regrid: optional, character string
sample: either sample label or map with sampling options, optional
fail_on_missing_file: optional, logical
-
collection- name of the dataset to use, can be/dev/nullwhich sets the field to zero -
variable- name of the variable in the dataset -
linear_transformation- shift and scale parameters to apply to the field i.e.[1.0,2.0]default none, the sample shown for each value in the field being filled would be like thisoutput(i,j)=1.0+2.0*output(i,j), finally note if you set the collection todev/nullthe linear transformation is still applied (i.e. if you want to set to something other than zero, so only the shift matters) -
regrid- regridding method, options "BILINEAR", "CONSERVE", "VOTE", "FRACTION;value", default bilinear -
sample- this is either one of the keys in the Sampling map or you can inline the sampling options. I.E.sample: sample1orsample: {time_interpolation: false}. This is optional, if not provided uses the defaults for all. -
fail_on_missing_file- new from v3.32.0, basically this says, if you are still accessing a dataset in the "normal" mode, not as a climatology or any sort of outside the data persistence, then if a file in the sequence is "missing", i.e. the next file in the sequence can't be found, the bracket is set to MAPL undef rather than just crashing and ExtData just continues on.
Vector handling - sometimes ExtData might get a pair of fields that represent of vector pair and should be treated as such when regridding for example. This can be specified using a rule like:
Exports:
U;V: {collection: dataset1, variable: U;V}
The key is to put the two components in a single rule with the 2 names separated by a semi-colon (;), likewise with the file_var. These are broken apart during parsing but when regridding both components will be treated as a vector, the first variable being treated as the east-west component.
Sometimes there may be situations where the user may want to use different Export rules for a variable during different time periods. For example maybe you have real-time data for a period but outside of that you want to use a climatology. Or you just have different datasets for different periods. ExtData allows the user to specify multiple rules for a single item. In this way the user may adjust any or all of the parameters for an Export rule. In order to use this feature the user must do two things.
- Identify the time you want each rule to start to be applied
- Any collection referenced using this feature must include a valid time range.
Consider the example:
BC_AIRCRAFT:
collection: CA2G_BC-em-AIR-anthro_input4MIPs_emissions_CMIP_CEDS-2021-04-21_gn__aviation.x576_y361_z72_t12.%y4.nc4
regrid: CONSERVE
sample: CA2G_sample_1
variable: bc_aviation
BC_BIOMASS:
- {starting: "2014-12-01T12:00", collection: CA2G_qfed2.emis_bc.006.%y4%m2%d2.nc4, linear_transformation: [0.0, 0.6], regrid: CONSERVE, sample: CA2G_sample_1, variable: biomass}
- {starting: "2021-11-01T12:00", collection: CA2G_qfed2.emis_bc.061.%y4%m2%d2.nc4, linear_transformation: [0.0, 0.7], regrid: CONSERVE, sample: CA2G_sample_1, variable: biomass}
The setting for BC_AIRCRAFT uses a normal rule as explained before. However, the value of the key BC_BIOMASS is a sequence. The values of the sequence are normal mappings that define the export rule. Noticed though that each export rule has an extra item "starting". This says that starting on this date use that rule in this example between 2014-12-01T12:00 and 2021-11-01T12:00 it will use that first rule, then at 2021-11-01T12:00 it will use the second rule for any time after that. Note in this example we have changed both the collection we are using and the scaling factors.
The derived entries consist of a key for the variable name to fill and two elements of the map associated with the key. Derived entries are exactly that. They are derived via some expression from variables in the primary entries. Note that the configuration of the application need not actually need the variables in the expression. If the variable is not needed ExtData will add it to the list of primary exports that it must fill. In this case ExtData will add the required variables as extra primary exports and will "borrow" the grid (both the horizontal and verical) from the derived export.
Derived:
variable_name_in_field:
expression: character string
sample: either sample label or map with sampling options, optional
The allowed expressions for the derived export fall into two categories: mask functions, and arbitary functions that use the arithmetic expression parser in MAPL
The first kind of functions are masks. Three types are supported:
- zone masking: masks out anything outside of the min/max latitude defined in the function.
- region masking: the user requests the field to be masked with another field. It is assumed all the data points in the masking field are integers and the user says anywhere the mask variable is not one of the integers mask it out.
- box masking: allows one to specify a box in lat/lon space and anything outside the box is masked.
The example below shows how the three masks are used:
Derived:
VARM1: {function: "regionmask(VAR2D,mymask;4,10)"}
VARM2: {function: "zonemask(VAR2D,-60.1,60.1)"}
VARM3: {function: "boxmask(VAR2D,-60,60,-60,60)"}
Note that the longitudes and latitudes are expressed in degrees. In all 3 masks it is assumed that both VAR2D and mymask are the names of Exports that are also defined.
The other choice is to define the function to be some arithmetic function of some variables that correspond to Exports. For example you could do this:
Derived:
VARM1: {function: "MYVAR_1+(MYVAR_2)*2.0"}
For more information about the allowed expressions, see the MAPL Arithmetic Parser document.
Here is an example input file:
Samplings:
daily_noclim: {update_reference_time: "0" ,update_frequency: PT24H, update_offset: PT12H}
daily_clim: {update_reference_time: "0" ,update_frequency: PT24H, update_offset: PT12H, extrapolation: clim}
persist: {extrapolation: persist_closest}
Collections:
qfed_su: {template: $(PIESA)/sfc/QFED/v2.4r6/Y%y4/M%m2/qfed2.emis_so2.005.%y4%m2%d2.nc4}
anthro_energy: {template: $(MERRA2)/sfc/edgar-v42.emis_so2.energy.x1152_y721.19700703T12z_20200703T00z.nc4}
anthro_non_energy: {template: $(MERRA2)/sfc/edgar-v42.emis_so2.non_energy.x1152_y721.19700703T12z_20200703T00z.nc4 }
ship_so2: {template: $(MERRA2)/sfc/edgar-v41.emis_so2.navigation.x360_y181_t47.19750703T12z_20210703T00z.nc4}
ship_so4: {template: $(MERRA2)/sfc/edgar-v41.emis_so4.navigation.x360_y181_t47.19750703T12z_20210703T00z.nc4}
aircraft_su: {template: $(AeroCom)/L72/AeroCom.aircraft_fuel.eta.x288_y181_z72_t14.%y4.nc}
mixing_su: {template: $(MERRA2)/L72/gmi_ctm_hindcast.oxidants.x144_y91_z72_t14.%y4.nc4}
dms_su: {template: $(MERRA2)/sfc/DMSclim_sfcconcentration.x360_y181_t12.Lana2011.nc4}
mask: {template: $(AeroCom)/sfc/ARCTAS.region_mask.x540_y361.2008.nc}
Exports:
SU_BIOMASS: {collection: qfed_su, variable: biomass, sample: daily_noclim, regrid: CONSERVE, linear_transformation: [0., 2.0]}
SU_ANTHROL1: {collection: anthro_non_energy, variable: anthrol1, sample: daily_noclim, regrid: CONSERVE}
SU_ANTHROL2: {collection: anthro_energy, variable: sanl2, sample: daily_noclim, regrid: CONSERVE}
SU_SHIPSO2: {collection: ship_so2, variable: so2_ship, sample: daily_noclim, regrid: CONSERVE}
SU_SHIPSO4: {collection: ship_so4, variable: so4_ship, sample: daily_noclim, regrid: CONSERVE}
SU_AIRCRAFT: {collection: aircraft_su, variable: fuel, sample: daily_noclim, regrid: CONSERVE}
SU_DMSO: {collection: dms_su, variable: conc, sample: daily_clim, regrid: CONSERVE}
SU_H2O2: {collection: mixing_su, variable: H2O2, sample: daily_noclim, regrid: CONSERVE}
SU_OH: {collection: mixing_su, variable: OH, sample: daily_noclim, regrid: CONSERVE}
SU_NO3: {collection: mixing_su, variable: NO3, sample: daily_noclim, regrid: CONSERVE}
SU_AVIATION_LTO: {collection: /dev/null, linear_transformation: [0.1, 0.0]}
SU_AVIATION_CDS: {collection: /dev/null}
SU_AVIATION_CRS: {collection: /dev/null}
pSO2_OCS: {collection: /dev/null}
SU_regionMask: {collection: mask, variable: REGION_MASK, sample: {extrapolation: persist_closest}}
Here, we will touch on some "special" cases that may not be obvious.
- Time Invariant Data Collections: A scenario is for you to have something like a region mask that does not vary in time, so you will have a single file with no tokens in the template and a single time. This can be easily handled by simply setting the extrapolation keyword to
persist_closest. You do not need to specify an information like a valid time range or source time. In this trivial case it is smart enough to realize what the valid range is. And by setting the interpolation topersist_closest, it will just use the closest value, which is the only value! - Tile fields: As MAPL v2.40 ExtData2G can now fill fields that are on MAPL tiles if supplied with a file in the tile format which has a single non-time dimension named
tile_indexand a time dimension. This will allow gridded components that live on tiles (basically anything below GEOS_SurfaceGridComp) and currently use MAPL_ReadForcing to transition to using NetCDF files via ExtData. Unlike gridded input that can be spatial transformed, the tile data cannot, as this is simple something we currently cannot do period with tile data. This is not some limitation of ExtData but rather MAPL as a whole. So the file must be the correct file for the fields you intend to fill. So unlike the gridded data where we can have one set of data on a horizontal resolution that can be regridded, for each different model configuration you would need to specify the right tile data. All ExtData does is read the tiles and distribute them according to the attached mask on the grid. This mask is of course determined by how the tiles are "attached" the atmosphere or ocean grid in GEOS.
In this section, we will go over common cases for the old ExtData and how you would express this syntactically in the new ExtData.
These are easy. In the old ExtData you might have a primary export entry like this:
PrimaryExports%%
myvar "m/2" N Y 0 2.0 3.0 filevar my_template
%%
In the new syntax you would have:
Collections:
my_coll:
template: my_template
Exports:
myvar: {variable: filevar, collection: my_coll, regrid: CONSERVE, linear_transformation: [2.0 3.0]}
The good news is that your old ExtData rc file had a refresh template of '0' you can just leave the samplings keyword blank in the new ExtData yaml file since that's the default and you don't have to do anything!
A lot of old ExtData files have a refresh template that looks like this:
%y4-%m2-%d2t12:00:00
What this actually does it to update the pointer one a day at 0z but it will apply a 12 hour offset to the working time used when selecting the correct time from the file and doing time interpolation. In the new ExtData you would specify that behaviour like this via a sampling rule:
Samplings:
daily_sample_with_offset:
update_frequency: PT24H
update_offset: PT12H
update_reference_time: '0'
This accomplishes the same thing. It says, update the pointer every 24 hours relative to 0z. Then apply a 12 hour offset to the working time.
In the CTM you will see this refresh template for some collections:
0;3000
This says to update everytime ExtData runs but use a 30 minute positive offset
To do this in the new ExtData define a sampling definition like so:
Samplings:
sample_each_step_with_offset:
update_offset: PT30M
In the old ExtData you could turn off time interpolation by prepending the refresh template with an F like:
F0
In the new ExtData you would define a sampling definition like so:
Samplings:
sample_each_step_without_interpolation:
time_interpolation: false