Metrics
Metrics are computed by dctools during evaluation and aggregated in the result JSON files.
Core metric
The main score family is RMSD (Root Mean Square Deviation):
$$ \mathrm{RMSD} = \sqrt{\frac{1}{N}\sum_{i=1}^{N} (\hat{x}_i - x_i)^2} $$
where $\hat{x}_i$ is the model value interpolated at observation location/time and $x_i$ is the reference value.
Metric set in current DC1 configs
In dc1/config/dc1_wasabi.yaml and dc1/config/dc1_edito.yaml, dataset-level metric lists
typically include:
rmsdmae(for several observation datasets)
The pipeline also supports leaderboard display labels for additional metrics via
dc1/config/leaderboard_config.yaml.
Surface-only evaluation
DC1 metrics are computed on surface data only. If depth is present in inputs, the evaluation extracts the surface level before interpolation/scoring.
Spatial per-bin outputs
When enabled, the pipeline exports per-bin metric summaries using per_bins_resolution
(configured in YAML). This is used for map-based diagnostics.
Practical interpretation
Lower values indicate better agreement with references.
Compare scores by variable and lead time rather than only a single global value.
Validate stability across references (altimetry, Argo, gridded reanalysis).