Open-Source Principles Utilized by the CERES Edition 5 Level-3 Framework

The Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) Science Team integrates and fuses observations from six CERES instruments aboard the Terra, Aqua, S-NPP, and NOAA-20 missions with data from twenty-five geostationary imagers, in creating a nearly 25-year, ongoing record of the Earth’s radiation budget. In preparation for the next version of CERES data products, the team has been exploring software development methods leveraging open-source principles and software to streamline data product configuration and algorithm implementation. This effort will provide robust software for production while maintaining greater flexibility for the algorithm developers to explore new science.

Developers on the CERES Level 3 products have created a framework allowing greater modularization and flexibility to design and configure CERES Level 3 products while reducing development time. The framework leverages open data formats to configure data variables and attributes within the product, declare tolerances for input validation, select resolution and binning schemes, and allow algorithm selection at runtime without requiring recompilation of the product generator. The framework incorporates means to perform unit and integration testing allowing more rapid feedback to the science team. The framework has been used for one current CERES data product and has demonstrated promise for upcoming products in development.