[CF-metadata] regions

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 08:26:27 +0100

Dear Bryan

The GCMD list hasn't grown, I don't think; we made a subset of it. We omitted

* countries i.e. we included only geographical regions.

* regions that could be specified by coordinate ranges, because that's what
you'd do in CF. If we included "Western Hemisphere", for instance, it might
conflict with a longitude range.

* ill-defined regions, such as "Mid-latitude" (which if precise could anyway
be specified by a coordinate range).

* names that correspond to elements of standard_names, such as "Surface" and
"Land surface".

* names which aren't geographical regions, such as "Mantle".

Hence I don't think consistency can be maintained entirely automatically. The
GCMD list apparently serves a rather less precise function than the CF list. I
wish it could be done automatically, because I agree that we want to keep in
step, and in this case I agree we should ask GCMD to add "Indo-Pacific Ocean"
to their list.

Could we semi-automate it, by being made aware of when GCMD update their list
and have some software suggest possible additions to the CF list?

Best wishes

Jonathan
Received on Thu Apr 01 2004 - 00:26:27 BST