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Getting Started

Welcome to the documentation for the NEMO Cookbook 👋

What is the NEMO Cookbook? 🧑‍🍳 📖

NEMO Cookbook is a collection of Python recipes for performing reproducible analyses of NEMO ocean general circulation model outputs.

Our aim is to provide Python implementations of the post-processing & analysis functions available in CDFTOOLS alongside new diagnostics (e.g., surface-forced water mass transformation), which are compatible with generalised vertical coordinate systems (e.g., MES).

Importantly, the NEMO Cookbook does aim to be a generic ocean circulation model analysis framework such as xgcm. As such, recipes do not require users to generate grid objects in advance of their calculations; only the necessary NEMO grid variables are required similar to CDFTOOLS.

Each recipe comprises of one or more functions built using the xarray, flox & dask libraries (think of these are your cooking utensils!) & the raw ingredients (ocean model outputs) - that's where you come in!

Quick Start 🚀

Installation

We recommend downloading and installing NEMO Cookbook into a new virtual environment via GitHub

First, clone the latest version of the nemo_cookbook repository using Git: 

git clone git@github.com:NOC-MSM/nemo_cookbook.git

Next, install the dependencies in a new conda virtual environment: 

cd nemo_cookbook

conda env create -f environment.yml

Finally, activate your new virtual environment and pip install NEMO Cookbook in editable mode:

conda activate env_nemo_cookbook

pip install -e .
Helpful Tip...
  • We strongly recommend setting-up a virtual environment before installing nemo_cookbook with pip.

The simplest way to create a new virtual environment is to use venv:

python3.13 -m venv "env_nemo_cookbook"

Alternatively, using an existing miniconda or miniforge installation:

conda env create -f environment.yml

Current Recipes

The following recipes are currently available in the NEMO Cookbook and be explored on the Recipes page:

  1. Meridional Overturning Stream Function in an arbitrary tracer coordinates.

  2. Meridional Overturning Stream Function in depth coordinates (z/z*).

  3. Meridional Heat & Salt Transports.

  4. Surface-Forced Overturning Stream Functions in potential density coordinates.

  5. Volume census in temperature - salinity coordinates.

  6. Extracting the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic array.

Recipe Wishlist

The following recipes are in development:

  1. Barotropic Stream Functions.

  2. Meridional Overturning Stream Functions in depth coordinates (MES).

  3. Ocean Heat Content & Mixed Layer Heat Content.

  4. Sea Ice Diagnostics.

  5. Vorticity Diagnostics.

Learning More...

To learn more about the NEMO Cookbook, including how to contribute your own recipes, see the User Guide and Contributing pages.