[CF-metadata] What do models assume for the shape of the Earth?

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 20:19:16 +0100

Dear John

> What im after, though, is the ability for software to read netcdf files
> and "do the right thing", in this case serve the data out, eg in a WCS
> server. For that, I do need to know the Earth shape. It seems reasonable
> to decide where to add these modest amounts of information into the file
> itself, if the data provider wants to.

The data provider probably doesn't care very much. This information is not
seen as critical for interpretation or even formulation of the model. Hence
you can probably legitimately serve it using any reasonable assumption.

The situation would be different if the radius or Earth shape really did
matter significantly to the model results. But even so you might not store
it in the CF metadata. There are many aspects of model formulation which
could be relevant to interpretation of the data, but we can't record the
model formulation in all of the model output files. To me it would seem more
appropriate to provide attributes that point to other places where information
about the model can be found, when possible in a machine-readable form.

Best wishes

Jonathan
Received on Wed Apr 06 2005 - 13:19:16 BST