Connectivity files ¶
Introduction ¶
Tools in the QuickView family are designed to visualize data on the native grid. Our starting point was the cubed spheres used by the Energy Exascale Earth System Model's (E3SM's) atmosphere component, EAM. Meshes of the same (or similar) structure have also been used in simulations performed with E3SM's land component, ELM, as well as the atmosphere component of the Community Earth System Model (CESM) when utilizing a spectral element dynamical core. Some examples can be found in our gallery.
Cubed spheres are unstructured meshes. Our tools need the so-called connectivity files to map simulation data to the globe. Each cubed sphere (e.g., ne30) can have two types of grid representation:
- the spectral-element representation consisting of Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre (GLL) nodes, e.g.,
ne30np4; - the finite-volume representation consisting of grid cells of approximately equal areas (e.g.,
ne30pg2,ne30pg3).
Starting in QuickView version 2.10.1 and QuickCompare version 1.11.1, both representations are supported. Variables on the GLL nodes are handled as point data, while those on the finite-volume grids are handled as cell data.
Connectivity file download ¶
A few collections of connectivity files can be found on Zenodo.
- Quasi-uniform cubed spheres used by E3SM
- Regionally refined cubed spheres used by E3SM
- Connectivity files for visualizing CESM output
Connectivity file generation ¶
Connecitivity files for the finite-volume representation can be generated using TempestRemap. (Ullrich and Taylor, 2015; Ullrich et al., 2016).
Connecitivity files for the GLL grids can be generated by compiling and executing the homme_tool released as part of the E3SM source code.
For a regionally refined mesh, both tools will need the Exodus format grid file (.g file) as input.