Benchmarking Regridding Libraries Used in Earth System Modelling

Components of Earth system models (ESMs) usually use different numerical grids because of the different environments they represent. Therefore, a coupling field sent by a source model has to be regridded to be used by a target model. The regridding has to be accurate and, in some cases, conservative, in order to ensure the consistency of the coupled model. Here, we present work done to benchmark the quality of four regridding libraries currently used in ESMs, i.e., SCRIP, YAC, ESMF and XIOS. We evaluated five regridding algorithms with four different analytical functions for different combinations of six grids used in real ocean or atmosphere models. Four analytical functions were used to define the coupling fields to be regridded. This benchmark calculated some of the metrics proposed by the CANGA project, including the mean, maximum, RMS misfit, and global conservation. The results show that, besides a few very specific cases that present anomalous values, the regridding functionality in YAC, ESMF and XIOS can be considered of high quality and do not present the specific problems observed for the conservative SCRIP remapping. The evaluation of the computing performance of those libraries is not included in the current work but is planned to be performed in the coming months. This exercise shows that benchmarking can be a great opportunity to favour interactions between users and developers of regridding libraries.

Automated summary

This article introduces the benchmarking of four regridding libraries currently used in Earth system models. The performance of different algorithms and functions in various grid combinations of ocean or atmosphere models were evaluated, and it was found that, except for some issues with SCRIP remapping, the regridding functionality in the other libraries is of high quality.