Introduction
============

Overview of AQUA
----------------

AQUA (Climate DT Applications for QUality Assessment)
is a model evaluation framework designed for running diagnostics on high-resolution climate models,  
also known as Digital Twins of Earth.
The package provides a flexible and efficient framework to process and analyze large volumes of climate data. 
With its modular design, AQUA offers seamless integration of core functions and a wide range of diagnostic 
tools that can be run in parallel.

Purpose
-------

The purpose of AQUA is to streamline the diagnostic process for high-resolution climate models, 
making it easier for researchers and scientists to analyze and interpret climate data. 
AQUA aims to provide a comprehensive toolkit for data preparation 
and running diagnostics on climate model outputs.

Key Features
------------

- Efficient handling of large datasets from high-resolution climate models
- Support for various data formats, such as GRIB, NetCDF, Zarr, FDB and Parquet access
- Robust and fast regridding functionality
- Averaging and aggregation tools for temporal and spatial analyses
- Metadata and coordinate fixes for data homogenization and comparison
- Modular design for easy integration of new diagnostics
- Lazy data access and parallel processing for faster execution of diagnostics, with limited memory usage

Contributing
------------

AQUA is developed under the European Union Contract `DE_340_CSC - Destination Earth Programme
Climate Adaptation Digital Twin (Climate DT)`.
Contributions to the project are welcome and can be made through the GitHub repository.
Please refer to the Contribution Guidelines contained in the ``CONTRIBUTING.md`` file
in the repository for more information.