Concept

The Models-3/EDSS Input/Output Applications Programming Interface (I/O API) provides the environmental model developer with an easy-to-learn, easy-to-use programming library for data storage and access, available from both Fortran and C. The same routines can be used for both file storage (using netCDF files) and model coupling (using PVM mailboxes). It is the standard data access library for both the NCSC/CMAS's EDSS project and EPA's Models-3. There was also an external-package wrapper for the I/O API in the Weather Research and Forecasting Model [WRF], which optionally uses I/O API coupling mode to couple WRF-Chem with SMOKE. [Unfortunately, that has not been kept up-to-date by NCAR.]

The I/O API provides a variety of data structure types for organizing the data, and a set of access routines which offer selective direct access to the data in terms meaningful to the modeler. For example,

Read layer 1 of variable 'OZONE' from 'CONCFILE' for 5:00 PM GMT on July 19, 1988 and put the result into array A.

is a direct English translation of a typical I/O API READ3() call. "Selective direct access" means that this READ3 call retrieves exactly this ozone data immediately. It does not have to read through previous hours of data, nor whatever other variables (such as NOX or PAN) are in the file. Data can be read or written in any order (or not at all).

This characteristic provides the following advantages:

• performance: visualization and analysis programs looking at selected parts of the data don't need to read unrequested data from the files.
• modularity: Data can be read or written in any order (or not at all). The same input files serve both engineering models and full-chemistry models -- the former reading just a few of the variables from the files, the latter reading most of them. The modular-model structure used for Models-3 depends upon this.
• robustness: data are "tagged" by name, date, and time; miscounted record-numbers don't scramble temperatures with pressures, for example.

I/O API files also have the following characteristics

• They are machine-independent and network-transparent, except for the NCEP native-binary mode. Files created on a Cray can be read on a desktop workstation (or vice versa) either via NFS mounting or FTP, with no further translation necessary.
• They are self-describing -- that is, they contain headers which provide a complete set of information necessary to use and interpret the data they contain.
• The API provides automated built-in mechanisms to support production application requirements for histories and audit trails:
  • ID of the program execution which produced the file
  • Description of the study scenario in which the file was generated
• They support a variety of data types used in the environmental sciences, among them
  • gridded (e.g., concentration fields or meteorology-model temperatures)
  • grid-boundary (for air quality model boundary conditions)
  • scattered (e.g., meteorology observations or source level emissions)
  • sparse matrix (as used in the SMOKE emissions model)
  • User customized to cover other potential applications.
• They support three different time step structures:
  • time-stepped (with regular time-steps) like hourly model-output concentration fields or twice-daily upper air meteorology observation profiles, or
  • time-independent like terrain height.
  • restart, which maintains "even" and "odd" time step records, so that restart data does not consume an inordinate amount of disk space

The I/O API also contains an extensive set of utility routines for manipulating dates and times, performing coordinate conversions, storing and recalling grid definitions, sparse matrix arithmetic, etc., as well as a set of data-manipulation and statistical analysis programs. It has an extensive documentation set, including

• Home Page
• Index and User Manual for data access routines, utility routines, date/time manipulation routines, and analysis programs;
• Data-manipulation, geospatial-transform, and statistical-analysis programs;
• Tutorial;
• Requirements Document;
• Sample Programs

Various extensions and research efforts to the I/O API have been developed or are under development. Developments include sparse-matrix arithmetic and I/O routines; high level WRF-format and MPAS-format netCDF I/O and utility routines; high level "raw netCDF" I/O routines; high-level geospatial and re-gridding routines; and the use of the I/O API interacting with PVM for model coupling, and adding operations to read or write entire time series (with multiple time steps) as single operations, and research projects include data-parallel I/O and a very powerful "geospatial cell complex" data type with polygonal-cell decompositions that may be both time independent (as for finite elememt modeling) and time dependent (as for moving-mesh plume-in-grid modeling).

Latest Version: IOAPI version 3.2

DOWNLOAD | DOCUMENTATION

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Training

There currently is no training available for i/o api

Support

• Tutorial
• CMAS Help Desk
• CMAS Forum

Online Resources

• netCDF This is the host site for netCDF at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
• PVM from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, used by the Coupling Mode of the I/O API.

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System Requirements

O/S	Linux or UNIX or MacOS
Processor	basically anything fitting the above
Memory	application dependent
Disk Space	500 MB
Software	Fortran and C compilers selected from the following list: AIX xlc,xlf MacOS X icc,ifort HPUX, HP cc,f90 IRIX5, SGI cc,f90 IRIX6, SGI cc,f90 Linux/alpha, DEC cc,fort Linux/ia64, GNU gcc/g95 Linux/ia64, Intel icc/ifc Linux/x86*, Absoft gcc,f95 Linux/x86*, GNU gcc, g95 Linux/x86*, GNU gcc, gfortran Linux/x86*, Intel icc,ifort Linux/x86*, GNU gcc, Intel ifort Linux/x86*, PathScale pathcc,pathf90 Linux/x86*, PGI pgcc,pgf90 Linux/x86*, GNU gcc, PGI pgf90 Linux/x86*, SunStudio suncc,sunf95 Linux/x86*, GNU gcc, Lahey lf95 SunOS5 cc,f90 Cray UniCOS, cc,f90