Setting Up Your Dataset

climpred relies on a consistent naming system for xarray dimensions. This allows things to run more easily under-the-hood.

Prediction ensembles are expected at the minimum to contain dimensions init and lead. init is the initialization dimension, that relays the time steps at which the ensemble was initialized. lead is the lead time of the forecasts from initialization. Another crucial dimension is member, which holds the various ensemble members. Any additional dimensions will be passed through climpred without issue: these could be things like lat, lon, depth, etc.

Control runs, references, and observational products are expected to contain the time dimension at the minimum. For best use of climpred, their time dimension should cover the full length of init from the accompanying prediction ensemble, if possible. These products can also include additional dimensions, such as lat, lon, depth, etc.

See the below table for a summary of dimensions used in climpred, and data types that climpred supports for them.

short_name	types	long_name
lead	int	lead timestep after initialization [init]
init	int	initialization: start date of experiment
member	int, str	ensemble member