Traditional map projections introduce distortions, especially for global data. Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) offer an altern- ative by dividing the Earth into equal-area grid cells at different resolutions. This paper describes xdggs, a new Xarray extension that simplifies working with DGGS. Xdggs provides a unified API for various DGGS libraries and integrates seamlessly with the Pangeo ecosystem, through extending the widely used Xarray library to use the DGGS-specific cell identifiers as an index. This development makes DGGS more accessible and will lead to facilitating data analysis on a planetary scale.

Xdggs aims to provide a user-friendly API that hides the implementation complexities of different DGGS libraries. And because it integrates seamlessly with Xarray, a popular tool for geospatial data analysis, xdggs promotes FAIR data practices by simplifying data access and interoperability, and can become a valuable tool for geospatial scientists and application developers working with global datasets.