No, not that CIA. This repository maintains the Common Input Arguments (CIA) that are used by independently developed analysis capabilities designed for evaluation General Circulation Models (GCMs) or Earth System Models (ESMs). Common use of these arguments facilitates integration of these analysis tools.

Many modeling centers are interested in using multiple internally or externally developed analysis packages. They and other potential users can experience substantial benefit if independently developed packages can be operated at least somewhat similiarly. The common input options provided by the CIA offer a default or starting point which can easily be modified or appended as they are being used. In this way it serves to incrimentally buildi a framework that can facilitate inter-operability of different analysis packages.

The CIA is overseen by a small team motivated to help advance the interoperability of different GCM/ESM analysis capabilities. When changes are agreed upon, they will be added to the defaults stored in a JSON file. Version control will enable users to control how they adopt to modifications. Additions can be requested via issues on this GitHub site. Anyone interested in contributing to the support of the CIA or wanting to register to recieve routine status updates should contact (email listserv coming soon). The Climate-Forecast conventions (http:https://cfconventions.org/) are an example of what we aspire to accomplish with the CIA.

We recommend use of the standard python argparse module to control input arguments. Powerful benefits can also be realized by using the Community Diagnotics Package (CDP). The CIA is designed with argparse in mind, however, there are many ways a user might implement the CIA. Shared syntax is the objective. How it gets used is determined by the user.

For more information including examples and instructions, see https://github.com/PCMDI/CIA/tree/master/demo.

Capabilities currently using and contributing to the CIA:

• PCMDI Metrics Package: https://github.com/PCMDI/pcmdi_metrics
• E3SM diagnostics package: https://github.com/E3SM-Project/acme_diags
• ARM diagnostics package: https://github.com/ARM-DOE/arm-gcm-diagnostics