Skip to content

spec: expand radar precipitation scope to single-radar products#36

Merged
franchg merged 1 commit into
mlcast-community:mainfrom
franchg:feat/spec-allow-single-radar
Apr 23, 2026
Merged

spec: expand radar precipitation scope to single-radar products#36
franchg merged 1 commit into
mlcast-community:mainfrom
franchg:feat/spec-allow-single-radar

Conversation

@franchg

@franchg franchg commented Apr 23, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

Summary

  • Previously the radar precipitation spec explicitly excluded single-radar datasets and only accepted multi-radar composites. This PR expands the scope to also admit single-radar products, provided they meet the existing §3.2 spatial requirements (≤1 km resolution, and valid sensing area supporting at least one 256×256 crop).
  • Motivation: discussion with AEMET on including the Zaragoza regional radar dataset (~1 km, 480×480, fits a 256×256 crop within the sensing disk). The composite-only rule was a proxy for "enough pixels for a decent receptive field" — §3.2 already enforces that directly, so the blanket exclusion was redundant and overly restrictive.

Changes

  • §1 Introduction: "2D gridded radar … datasets" instead of "composite datasets".
  • §2 Scope: both multi-radar composites and single-radar products are in scope, subject to §3.2.
  • §3.2 Spatial Requirements: reword resolution clause to "2D gridded radar data"; clarify that the 256×256 sensing-area rule applies equally to composites and single-radar products.
  • CHANGELOG: add [Unreleased] > Changed entry.

Follow-ups (not in this PR)

  • check_spatial_requirements currently validates array dimensions, not the valid-data sensing disk. A single-radar product with heavy shadowing could pass by dims alone. Enforcing the disk-level requirement needs a mask/NaN convention that isn't yet in the spec — worth a separate discussion.
  • Leif noted that §4.4 should render the allowed standard_name values explicitly in the spec docs. Not included here.

Test plan

  • uv run mkdocs build --strict produces a clean spec render with the updated §1 / §2 / §3.2 text.
  • Existing tests still pass (no check logic changed in this PR).

Previously the specification explicitly excluded single-radar datasets.
The practical constraint is the 256x256 crop requirement within the
valid sensing area (§3.2), which multi-radar composites and
sufficiently-sized single-radar products can both satisfy (e.g. a
single C-band radar at 1 km with ~480 px diameter, or finer resolution
single-radar products).

- §1 Introduction: "2D gridded radar ... datasets" instead of
  "composite datasets"
- §2 Scope: explicitly include both multi-radar composites and
  single-radar products, subject to §3.2
- §3.2 Spatial Requirements: reword resolution clause to "2D gridded
  radar data"; clarify that the 256x256 sensing-area rule applies
  equally to composites and single-radar products

@leifdenby leifdenby left a comment

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Looks great to me - thanks for making these changes!

@franchg franchg merged commit c2663ba into mlcast-community:main Apr 23, 2026
3 checks passed
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Labels

None yet

Projects

None yet

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

2 participants