[CF-metadata] standard name proposals

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 08:10:25 +0100

Dear John

> As little as I understand it, isn't radiative flux actually just in units of
> Watts, while irradiance takes the "per unit area" into account?
Ah. Yes, another complication is that what we refer to as "flux" in the
standard names is actually "flux density" in physics terms i.e. W m-2. We had
quite a lot of discussion about this and it was thought we should take this
approach because "flux" almost universally means something m-2 in atmos and
ocean modelling at least.

So I should rephrase my question. Is there any difference between irradiance
and radiative flux density?

Cheers

Jonathan
Received on Tue Aug 26 2003 - 01:10:25 BST