Update CMEW to use 2.14 ESMValTool environment

[NParsonsMO]

The new community environment was released on 11/06/2026 and have changes to the configuration files (specifying the paths and filename structures explicitly rather than in types stored in ESMValCore).

[ehogan]

This issue gives us an opportunity to reconsider how we are creating the ESMValTool configuration.

To use ESMValTool at the MO we need to run the commands (from ESMValTool Tutorial: Configuration):

esmvaltool config copy defaults/config-user.yml
esmvaltool config copy data-hpc-mo.yml

I wonder whether we should align CMEW with this (new) approach, in an attempt to make it easier to understand and debug.

If so, configure_recipe.py should contain:

• main
• retrieve_values_from_task_env
  • This function was created so values provided via the Cylc environment could be passed in to the functions below, which should (theoretically) make it easier to test (since the variables could then be provided rather than monkeypatched).
• create_user_config_file; current configuration options in this file are:
  • output_dir
  • auxiliary_data_dir
  • search_data (should always be "no")
  • max_parallel_tasks
  • log_level: info
  • exit_on_warning: false
  • output_file_type: png
  • remove_preproc_dir: true
  • compress_netcdf: false
  • save_intermediary_cubes: false
  • profile_diagnostic: false
• create_site_config_file
  • Whatever projects are provided in the optional configuration file for the site
• write_yaml

Rather than adding the default files to CMEW, I wonder whether we should get the current configuration from ESMValTool, then update (we did used to do this in an older version of CMEW)?

[ehogan]

Naomi Parsons (@NParsonsMO) and I discussed this a little while ago and we agreed to get the appropriate configuration files (based on site) from ESMValTool (as detailed at ESMValTool Tutorial: Configuration), in favour of storing the same information in CMEW 👍