Modelling Center Feedback

# Description

We are seeking feedback from modelling centers regarding the Climate REF project. Your insights are invaluable as we aim to improve our tools, data accessibility, and overall functionality. This feedback will help us ensure that the Climate REF meets the needs of the climate modelling community effectively.

## Background

We want to ensure that the platform is user-friendly and efficient and caters to the requirements of different modelling centers. We intend to provide modelling centers with the ability to run the same benchmarking locally that will be performed via the ESGF deployment of the REF.

# Getting Started

Documentation to come.

For now, follow the documentation we used for the Hackathon: https://cmip-ref.readthedocs.io/en/latest/hackathon/

For Alpha testing, it would be useful to verify the following works at your HPC facility:

* Install the REF (either via pip, docker/Apptainer or via source)
* Fetch the required observation data (https://climate-ref.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduction/required_datasets/)
* Ingest the observation dataset
* Ingest some local CMIP6 datasets
* Solve and Execute

The commands to perform these steps are described [here](https://cmip-ref.readthedocs.io/en/latest/development/#development-installation). This is a useful test to ensure that the entire process works end to end. The Beta release will include some additional tutorials for querying and displaying results, but that is still a work-in-progress.

# Feedback

## How to Provide Feedback

Please comment on this issue with your feedback or create a separate issue if you have specific topics to discuss. We encourage you to provide as much detail as possible, including examples where applicable, to help us understand your perspective. It is especially important to include the version of the REF that you have been using, as we intend to release new versions as we fix bugs and add features in the coming weeks.

If you have no specific feedback, please also mention the modelling center and/or HPC facility that you were able to install and run the REF on.

## Areas for Feedback:

1. **Data Accessibility:**
- Are the data formats and structures suitable for your needs?
- Are the results easily accessible, and are there any barriers you face in retrieving the necessary datasets?

2. **User Interface:**
- How intuitive is the current user interface (CLI or Website?
- Are there specific features or functionalities that you feel are missing or could be improved?

3. **Documentation:**
- Is the documentation clear and comprehensive?
- Are there areas where additional information would be beneficial?

4. **Performance:**
- How does the system perform with large datasets?
- Are there any performance issues you've encountered that need addressing?

5. **General Suggestions:**
- Any additional comments or suggestions that could help enhance the Climate REF project.

# Timeline

We will cut a release at the end of May which will be the first of the beta releases.
We would appreciate receiving your feedback by mid-June to incorporate your suggestions into our next development cycle.
Feedback after that will still be appreciated, but we might not be able to incorporate your suggestions in our July release.

Thank you for your collaboration and support in making Climate REF a more effective tool for climate research!