User story: model run descriptions

[alistairsellar]

This user story summarises the requirement for how CMEW should handle descriptions of each model run. This is two stories in a single issue. They are closely related, or at least I had previously conflated them.

Plot labelling

• As someone viewing CMEW outputs,
• I need each run to be consistently labelled in all plots, with a string provided by the CMEW user,
• So that I can rapidly understand what each run represents in the CMEW outputs.

Implementation notes:

• This means that the CMEW user should be required to provide a mandatory variable LABEL_FOR_PLOTS for each run.
• It also means that all CMEW recipes should make use of that label in plots, via the alias facet in dataset specifications in the recipe.
• Implement consistent plot labelling in CMEW #260 is the main issue associated with the first requirement, and has sub-issues for investigations and implementation.

File naming

• As a CMEW user,
• I want CMEW files associated with my run (standardised data, ESMValTool outputs such as plots) to be named in a meaningful way,
• So that I can more easily debug or find individual files.

Implementation ideas:

• One way to achieve this would be for CMEW to include the run's SUITE_ID in the MODEL_ID, since the latter is used by both CDDS and ESMValTool in naming most files. We need to investigate how CDDS constrains the MODEL_ID. Investigate how to name standardised files or directories in a meaningful way for each model development run #313 has been opened for this.
  • Note that @NParsonsMO has already checked that ESMValTool places no constraint on MODEL_ID (= dataset in ESMValTool): Investigate whether arbitrary "dataset" identifiers work in ESMValTool #290.
  • If we take this route, then open an issue for CMEW to automatically construct MODEL_ID and not make it configurable by the user. Something to discuss for that issue would be whether MODEL_ID exactly equals SUITE_ID or whether there is anything else that should be encoded in it.
• There may be other ways to achieve this though.