Dear Jing
Sorry for the delay in replying.
> Internally we have discussions to use the standard names as
> the variable names, are there any issues if we go that way?
> (like too long for display?)
If you want to store an alternative name for display purposes, you could use
the long_name attribute, which is described by the Unidata standard and so may
be recognised by more software.
> We also have measurements from tide gauges with
> its description at
> http://co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/mapfinder/mllw.html
>
> Are there any ideas for its standard name?
What is the quantity which you are measuring? Is it the sea surface height
above a particular tidal datum? This isn't the same as sea surface height
above the geoid or above (mean) sea level, so we'd need a new standard name.
Is the datum always MLLW (mean lower low water)? Do you also wish to record
information about the relative heights of the various datums at a location?
In that case we need some way of describing these datums. They could just be
named like MLLW, but it occurs to me we could also describe them systematically
using a syntax like cell_methods, if that is useful. MLLW is the mean over all
days (within a long period) of the minimum of the two lower waters in each day.
So far cell_methods has only been used for the diurnal and annual cycles, but
tidal cycles present similar issues.
Cheers
Jonathan
Received on Wed Oct 27 2004 - 01:25:25 BST
