Hi Guys
I note that CF1.0 already has a very out of date list of geographical names
(as in the GCMD keyword list has grown much longer), which brings me to a
crucial point that the CF community needs to consider - relationship with
other communities.
I recommend that
1) the CF convention defines acceptable geographical keywords to be those in
the GCMD list (i.e. they will change in time as more are added), and
2) possibly provides a rule for reformatting them to be consistent with CF
style, and
3) puts a link to the recommended gcmd way of adding new geographical
keywords.
I would then argue the right response for this problem would be to get
indo-pacific added to the gcmd list, and if that doesn't fly, then we
a) provide a mechanism for linking existing regions, or
b) force the user to define a bounding box.
I think this would make it far clearer how to deal with new geographical
regions in a consistent manner. It may require we keep an archive of the GCMD
parameter list as proper xml-schema, and get them to version their list more
carefully, so we can put a uri to the namespace used.
Note that 1) above is slightly different than CF1.0 which lists the acceptable
names rather than the acceptable namespace.
If we think this through, we might have some resource implications (keeping
track of GCMD, representing our community to GCMD). If the CF community so
desire, I'm happy to commit the BADC to maintaining such links, as part of
our standard curation activities.
Bryan
On Wednesday 31 March 2004 11:35 pm, Karl Taylor wrote:
> Dear Jonathan,
>
> Frank Bryan at NCAR was requesting "Indo-Pacific" for a region, which I
> guess is commonly used for calculating northward ocean heat transport in
> those basins.
>
> cheers,
> Karl
>
> Jonathan Gregory wrote:
> > Dear Karl
> >
> >>Is there a CF-compliant way to combine official regions (e.g., a region
> >>that includes both North America and South America)?
> >
> > I don't think so. We can either invent one, or introduce additional names
> > for combined regions. I would prefer the latter, as it involves no new
> > machinery, if it's practical. I think it would work if the combined
> > regions requiring names are a finite set, which I guess would be the case
> > e.g. I suspect you will not want a region name for Afghanistan plus
> > Zimbabwe.
> >
> > Best wishes
> >
> > Jonathan
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>
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--
Bryan Lawrence, Head NCAS/British Atmospheric Data Centre
web: www.badc.nerc.ac.uk phone: +44 1235 445012
CLRC: Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, OX110QX, UK
Received on Wed Mar 31 2004 - 23:59:21 BST
