[CF-metadata] Units: absolute vs difference

From: John Caron <caron>
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 12:22:07 -0700

Jonathan Gregory wrote:

>Dear John
>
>
>
>>is there any convention for specifying that a quantity is a differences
>>(like delta temperature) rather than absolute ?
>>
>>
>
>There is not yet such a convention. I think the units should be unaltered.
>This is really an aspect of the description of the quantity, I'd say - it has
>to do with how it has been derived. A common case is where anomalies are
>expressed relatively to a climatology; this might be done with a large range
>of quantities and we may need a systematic way to indicate it. But we would
>need to be able to say what the climatology was as well.
>
>Could you describe the example you are dealing with?
>
>
>

we're looking at WRF model output with temperature differences in
Kelvin. unfortunately, our software package converts to Celsius by
subtracting 273. We could fix if we knew it was a temp difference
instead of an absolute temp.

we're trying to nudge WRF into using CF, which is why the question came
to this forum. thanks for any thoughts.
Received on Tue Aug 10 2004 - 13:22:07 BST