Introduction

climt (pronounced klimt) is an attempt to build a climate modelling infrastructure that is easy to use, easy to understand and easy to learn.

Most climate model components are written in fortran for performance reasons. For that very reason, it is difficult to change model configurations and behaviour easily, which is something scientists tend to do all the time during their research. The earth-science community is converging towards Python as the language of choice for data analysis tasks, thanks to Python’s flexibility and emphasis on clean, readable code. climt aims to use Python for climate modelling for these very reasons – clearly documented components, self documenting model scripts, and a flexible configuration system will make climate modelling more reproducible and make the learning curve less steep.

climt is aimed at a wide spectrum of users – from students who are curious to learn about the climate system to researchers who want state-of-the-art components. climt aims to provide multiple levels of abstraction which will allow the user to tradeoff ease of use vs. flexibility, depending on their particular needs and experience in modelling and Python programming.