Minimum time span required in Diagnostics set discussion

[mcadau]

Discussion

As discussed offline and in #153 and #155, we could plan to centralize a minimum time span required to run the whole diagnostics set, to be checked via the DiagnosticCLI class.
Indeed, many points should be discussed: whether this threshold should vary across diagnostics, and the fact that for many diagnostics a a minimum time span threshold might reduce the diagnostic functionality (as reported by @tovaz92 for Sea Ice, for instance), or in any case might not be necessary.

What do you think?

[mnurisso]

As already available in the Diagnostic class:

def retrieve(self, var: str | None = None, reader_kwargs: dict = {},
                 months_required: int | None = None):
        """
        Retrieve the data from the model.

        Args:
            var (str | None): The variable to be retrieved. If None, all variables will be retrieved.
            reader_kwargs (dict): Additional keyword arguments to be passed to the Reader.
            months_required (int | None): The number of months of data required. If None, no check will be performed.

        Attributes:
            self.data: The data retrieved from the model. If return_data is True, the data will be returned.
            self.catalog: The catalog used to retrieve the data if no catalog was provided.
        """

isn't setting the months_required for all the diagnostic enough?

[jhardenberg]

Hmm... should #153 not make use of this mechanism then ?

[mnurisso]

It could, at the same time this is the only statistic for which you need two exact months, not a fixed number, but yes, it could simply be 12 for safety

[silviacaprioli]

If we already have this method let's use it I would say, so that only minimal changes are required. The minimum number of months is different from one diagnostic to another, so we need to add the argument in the retrieve in each diagnostic class and hardcode the min number of months required?

[mnurisso]

If we already have this method let's use it I would say, so that only minimal changes are required. The minimum number of months is different from one diagnostic to another, so we need to add the argument in the retrieve in each diagnostic class and hardcode the min number of months required?

Yes and document it here as well:

https://aqua-diagnostics.readthedocs.io/en/latest/stateoftheart_diagnostics/index.html#minimum-data-requirements