Package Phrasebook#
There are a number of similar packages to Iris, and a lot of these have their own terminology for similar things. Whether you’re coming or going, we hope this might be a helpful guide to these differences! Definitions for each can be found in Glossary. See also Xarray terminology.
Iris |
Xarray |
Example |
Notes |
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Non-Lazy |
Eager |
Used to relate to functions, rather than the data. |
|
Cube |
DataArray |
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CubeList |
Dataset |
Though similar, a CubeList is a simpler object, and is not a perfect comparison to a Dataset |
|
Merge/ Concatenate |
Concatenate |
Xarray’s concatenate has the capability to largely do what both Iris merge and Iris concatenate do. However, this is not a perfect comparison, please see the link for more information. |
|
Merge |
Xarray’s Merge function doesn’t map neatly map to any Iris feature. Please see the link for more information. |
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Scalar Coordinate |
Iris makes a distinction between scalar coordinates and non-scalar coordinates, whereas xarray documentation makes a distinction between scalar and non-scalar data. It is possible to make coordinates with scalar data in both Iris and xarray but only Iris will label such coordinates. |
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AuxCoord |
Non-Dimensional Coordinate |
Coordinates in Iris and xarray are categorised using different rules, and so are not a one-to-one match. |
|
DimCoord |
Dimension Coordinate |
Coordinates in Iris and xarray are categorised using different rules, and so are not a one-to-one match. |