Quickstart

This page gets you from a fresh Python environment to your first OpenAirClim simulation in a few minutes, using the example configuration and (randomly generated) emission inventories bundled with the repository. For installation alternatives, custom input data and everything else, see the User Guide.

Install OpenAirClim

Install OpenAirClim from PyPI with pip (Python 3.11 or later required):

pip install openairclim

(or, with uv: uv pip install openairclim)

This installs the minimal environment, sufficient to run the core model. See Installation for conda/source/uv installs and optional extras (GUI, docs, tests).

Download the repository data

OpenAirClim’s simulations require response surface and background concentration data, published independently of openairclim at dlr-pa/oac-data. Fetch the data version matching your installed release into a shared, per-user cache with:

oac-download-data

This only needs to be run once per machine.

Get the example

Clone the repository to get the bundled example configuration and emission inventories:

git clone https://github.com/dlr-pa/oac.git
cd oac/example

Run OpenAirClim

oac-run example.toml

(equivalently, python -m openairclim example.toml, or oac.run("example.toml") from within Python). Note that if there are any relative links in the config file (e.g. dir = "input/"), you must be in the right working directory, in this case oac/example, for OpenAirClim to run successfully.

Look at the results

The example.toml config file defines the output directoy as results/. In this folder, you can find:

  • example.nc - time series of emissions, concentrations, radiative forcing and temperature change for each species

  • example_metrics.nc - the requested climate metrics (AGWP, ATR, AGTP)

  • one PNG plot per species (e.g. example_CO2.png), since output.run_plots = true in the example configuration

Next steps

  • Explore configurations and results interactively with the Graphical User Interface.

  • The User Guide covers the configuration file in full, building your own emission inventories and time evolutions, and the contrail module.

  • The Demonstrations walk through worked examples in more depth.