33============
44Why UXarray?
55============
6- UXarray aims to address the geoscience community need for tools that enable standard
7- data analysis techniques to operate directly on unstructured grids. It extends upon
8- and inherits from the commonly used Xarray Python package to provide a powerful and
9- familiar interface for working with unstructured grids in Python. UXarray provides
10- Xarray styled functions to better read in and use unstructured grid datasets that
11- follow standard conventions, including UGRID, MPAS, SCRIP, ICON, HEALPix, and Exodus formats.
6+ UXarray aims to address the geoscience community's need for tools that enable foundational
7+ data analysis techniques to operate directly on unstructured grids. It extends upon and
8+ inherits from the commonly used Xarray Python package to provide a powerful and familiar
9+ interface for working with unstructured grids in Python. UXarray provides Xarray-styled
10+ functions to better read in and use unstructured grid datasets from the most common model
11+ outputs, including MPAS, CAM-SE, ICON, ESMF, GEOS, and HEALPix, which follow the commonly
12+ used formats such as UGRID, SCRIP, and Exodus. Furthermore, UXarray provides basic support
13+ for generating unstructured grid topology from structured grid or point-cloud inputs to
14+ enable model intercomparison workflows.
1215
1316
1417Unstructured Grids
1518==================
1619The "U" in UXarray stands for "Unstructured Grids". These types of grids differ from
17- typical Structured Grids in terms of complexity, requiring additional overhead to
18- store and represent their geometry and topology . However, these types of
19- grids are extremely flexible and scalable.
20+ typical Structured Grids in terms of complexity, requiring explicit information to be
21+ stored to represent the geometry, e.g. cell to node connectivity . However, these types
22+ of grids are extremely flexible and scalable.
2023
2124UXarray uses the `UGRID <http://ugrid-conventions.github.io/ugrid-conventions/ >`_
22- conventions as a
23- foundation to represent Unstructured Grids. These conventions
25+ conventions as a foundation to represent Unstructured Grids. These conventions
2426are intended to describe how these grids should be stored within a NetCDF file, with
2527a particular focus on environmental and geoscience applications. We chose to use a
2628single convention for our grid representation instead of having separate ones for each
2729grid format, meaning that we encode all supported unstructured grid formats in the
2830UGRID conventions at the data loading step.
2931
30- Specifically, our core functionality is built around two-dimensional
31- Unstructured Grids as defined by the 2D Flexible Mesh Topology in the
32- UGRID conventions, which can contain a mix of triangles, quadrilaterals, or
33- other geometric faces .
32+ Specifically, our core functionality is built around horizontally Unstructured Grids as
33+ defined by the 2D Flexible Mesh Topology in the UGRID conventions, which can contain
34+ a mix of triangles, quadrilaterals, or other geometric faces. These types of Unstructured
35+ Grids may have structured vertical levels .
3436
3537
3638Core Data Structures
3739====================
3840
39- UXarray’s core API revolves around three primary types, which extend Xarray for unstructured-grid workflows:
41+ UXarray’s core API revolves around three primary types, which extend Xarray for
42+ unstructured-grid workflows:
4043
4144.. list-table ::
4245 :widths: 20 80
@@ -52,7 +55,6 @@ UXarray’s core API revolves around three primary types, which extend Xarray fo
5255 - Similarly extends :py:class: `xarray.DataArray ` and exposes a ``uxgrid `` accessor for grid-aware operations.
5356
5457
55-
5658Core Functionality
5759==================
5860
@@ -63,9 +65,10 @@ these include:
6365* Visualization
6466* Remapping
6567* Subsetting
66- * Cross-Sections
68+ * Cross-sections
6769* Aggregations
68- * Zonal Averaging
70+ * Zonal averaging
71+ * Vector calculus
6972
7073A more detailed overview of supported functionality can be found in our
7174`API Reference <https://uxarray.readthedocs.io/en/latest/api.html >`_
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