Simulation Files ¶

The QuickView family of tools has been developed using history output on the physics grids (pg2 grids) of the E3SM Atmosphere Model, EAM, generated using EAMv2, v3, and intermediate versions towards v4 (EAMxx). Some sample output files can be found on Zenodo.

The horizontal dimension ¶

Starting from QuickView version 2 and QuickCompare version 1, the ParaView Reader used in the tool family has been generalized to handle all NetCDF variables on ne*pg2 cubed-sphere meshes regardless of what name is used for the horizontal dimension (e.g., ncol in EAM files or lndgrid in ELM files).

Multi-dimensional variables ¶

Starting from QuickView version 2 and QuickCompare version 1, the tool family has been generalized to visualize any variable in a NetCDF file that has a horizontal dimension matching the connecitivity file, regardless of how many additional dimensions the variables have.

Here are some examples of variable dimensions (array shapes) from EAM output files:

(ncol)
(time,lev,ncol)
(time,cosp_prs,cosp_tau,ncol)
(time,ncol,swband,lev)
(time,ncol,num_phys_constituents)

And here are some examples of variable dimensions (array shapes) from ELM output files:

(levgrnd,lndgrid)
(levlak,lndgrid)
(time,lndgrid)
(time,levgrnd,lndgrid)
(time,natpft,lndgrid)

Global averages ¶

When an area variable with the correct horizontal dimension is present in the simulation file, this variable is used for calculating the area-weighted horizontal averages displayed in the viewport. If the area variable is not present, then an arithmetic average is calculated and displayed.

Missing values ¶

When a variable has an attribute named missing_value or _FillValue, the value is converted to NaN and ignored in the calculation of global averages and for the visualization.