Why use the workflow?

This workflow has two main use cases: Evaluation, and verification.

It aids in evaluation by providing an easy and reproducible way of running many diagnostics over a number of datasets, as well as providing additional functionality over the command line tool for things like comparing models against each other and observations. It is particularly useful in the initial stages of an investigation, when you are trying to find an area of interest for deeper study and need to flexibly change the order of operators or add bespoke diagnostics.

For verification, the CSET workflow provides a reproducible and portable interface to run the MET analysis tools, and visualise the statistics it produces. This includes things like retrieval of model data and observations, cycling through different times,

Should I use the workflow or the CLI?

The workflow runs the CSET CLI (Command Line Interface) to produce its evaluation diagnostics, and provides additional functionality around comparing models. That doesn’t mean you should always use it however. The CLI will be much faster at returning a single diagnostic, allowing a much more flexible and responsive analysis where you follow the data. The general workflow will be to run the workflow to get started, and find interesting phenomena, before using the CLI to refine your search and quickly probe the underlying physics.