If you identify bugs or issues with the package, please raise an issue on the OceanVal GitHub page, or contact the package's creator, Robert Wilson, at rwi@pml.ac.uk.
OceanVal should handle most types of NetCDF file, but there will still be times when errors are thrown. If you would like to contribute, suggest new features, or point to data the package does not work with, please raise an issue or get in touch directly.
OceanVal is released under the GNU General Public License v3 (GPLv3), and distributed via conda-forge and GitHub.
OceanVal is developed by the Environmental Intelligence group at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Devon, UK.
OceanVal is built on a small number of open-source tools for working with climate and ocean data. Exact versions are pinned in requirements.txt and oceanval.yml.
Grid and file operations ultimately run through two command-line NetCDF toolkits: CDO (Climate Data Operators) and NCO (NetCDF Operators).
OceanVal is written in Python and built directly on nctoolkit, a Python interface to CDO and NCO developed alongside it. It also uses pandas and xarray for tabular and array data, geopandas for regional boundaries, matplotlib for some figures, and rpy2 to call R from within Python.
Most of the figures in a validation report are actually rendered by R, called via rpy2. OceanVal uses ggplot2 (part of the tidyverse) for plotting, ggtext to render units and formulae correctly in axis labels, ggthemes for colour palettes, and cowplot to combine multi-panel figures.
Development of OceanVal has been supported by the following projects:
NECCTON (New Copernicus Capability for Trophic Ocean Networks), a Horizon Europe project developing new marine ecosystem models to help the Copernicus Marine Service inform biodiversity conservation and food resource management.
AtlantiS (Atlantic Climate and Environment Strategic Science), a National Oceanography Centre programme strengthening UK capability to observe, model and predict change in Atlantic marine ecosystems.
