H5Coro Integration

[zachghiaccio]

We are currently looking to update the icepyx reader module to use H5Coro to efficiently read in queried ICESat-2 data. As is, the reader module is quite slow, especially if reading in data from the cloud, and H5Coro should make data reading much faster.

However, some work is needed for H5Coro to work with icepyx. H5Coro needs variable paths to be specified in a list format. It is also unclear how feasible it is to convert data loaded with H5Coro to Xarray. The easiest method is to read the data into GeoDataFrames, but converting these to Xarray is too memory-intensive.

A proposed temporary solution for the reader module is to convert local files into Xarray, and cloud-based files to GeoDataFrames. Moving forward, a more concrete solution will be needed for the H5Coro integration.

Current Tasks

• Make H5Coro reader routine that accepts icepyx variable lists (both default and custom user variable lists)
• Test H5Coro reader for multiple ICESat-2 products, given several spatial/temporal domain sizes
• Add check in reader module for local, cloud-sourced data
• Integrate H5Coro routine to icepyx reader module