ESMF 8.7.0 Released

[danrosen25]

Dear all,

The ESMF Core Team is pleased to announce the ESMF 8.7.0 release. It is now available for download at https://github.com/esmf-org/esmf/releases/tag/v8.7.0. Release notes and known issues are also available in the usual format on the ESMF website: https://earthsystemmodeling.org/static/releases.html#8_7_0.

The 8.7.0 release of ESMF is backward compatible. Although there are some API changes to add more options for users, this release requires no user code changes. ESMF 8.7.0 introduces 16 feature enhancements and 6 bug fixes in various areas. Notably, ESMPy now has options to associate a node mask with an ESMPy Mesh and to utilize endFlag when finalizing ESMPy. Several improvements are made in time management such as ISO 8601 time interval format and repeat capabilities for ESMF Clocks. This release also includes performance enhancements such as to the routeHandle calculation. In addition, ESMF 8.7.0 includes more user options such as a new cubed sphere coordinate calculation method and new methods and documentation to facilitate the use of the new HConfig class in application code. To demonstrate the capability to couple components in languages other than Fortran, new NUOPC application prototypes were added to showcase basic C API support through ESMX and NUOPC. Finally, starting with this release, all pull requests into develop will be automatically tested using a combination of settings.

The ESMF team is grateful for the many years of support, ideation, feedback, testing, and code contributions that the ESMF user community has provided since its inception. We look forward to continuing this partnership with the community to further improve and add features to ESMF. As always, please utilize ESMF Discussions (https://github.com/orgs/esmf-org/discussions) or write esmf_support@ucar.edu with any questions or issues concerning ESMF.

With best regards,

The ESMF Core Team