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Overview & Installation

Scientific Context

WCRP projects (e.g. CMIP6) generate large volumes of NetCDF files. ESGF-QC provides conformity checks to verify that these files follow the specifications (DRS, mandatory attributes, temporal consistency, etc.).

Architecture in a Nutshell

  • Base framework: IOOS Compliance Checker
  • Extensions: compliance_checker/checks/ contains atomic checks grouped by theme
  • WCRP/Project plugin: compliance_checker/wcrp/wcrp_cmip6.py + TOML configuration

Requirements

  • Python ≥ 3.10
  • Standard scientific stack (installed automatically): netCDF4, xarray, etc.

Installation

Install ESGF-QC from the Git repository

pip install git+[https://github.com/ESGF/esgf-qc.git@main]

And then install Esgvoc and Universe to get the Controlled Vocabulary (Mandatory)

esgvoc config set universe:branch=esgvoc_dev
esgvoc install

💡 Note: If you encounter a [Errno 2] No such file or directory error related to a missing file like sfcwind.json after running esgvoc install, simply run the same esgvoc install command again.
This issue is usually resolved on the second attempt as it may result from a temporary initialization glitch.

Verify the installation:

For esgqc :

esgqc --version
# or
python cchecker.py --version

For esgvoc :

esgvoc --help
# or
pip show esgvoc