Mesh Support#

Iris includes specialised handling of mesh-located data (as opposed to grid-located data). Iris and its partner packages are designed to make working with mesh-located data as simple as possible, with new capabilities being added all the time. More detail is in this section and in the iris.experimental.ugrid API documentation.

This mesh support is based on the CF-UGRID Conventions; UGRID-conformant meshes + data can be loaded from a file into Iris’ data model, and meshes + data represented in Iris’ data model can be saved as a UGRID-conformant file.

Meshes are different

Mesh-located data is fundamentally different to grid-located data. Many of Iris’ existing operations need adapting before they can work with mesh-located data, and in some cases entirely new concepts are needed. Read the detail in these pages before jumping into your own code.

Iris’ mesh support is experimental

This is a rapidly evolving part of the codebase at time of writing (Jan 2022), as we continually expand the operations that work with mesh data. Be prepared for breaking changes even in minor releases.

Get involved!

We know meshes are an exciting new area for much of Earth science, so we hope there are a lot of you with new files/ideas/wishlists, and we’d love to hear more 🙂.

Read on to find out more…