[CF-metadata] more netcdf attributes

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 18:24:24 +0100

Dear Ethan

Thanks for this document. It might be useful to advertise it to GO-ESSP,
perhaps, for their comments? I am not experienced with what kind of metadata is
needed in the file for discovery purposes but that is a concern of GO-ESSP.

* CF defines some global attributes already (section 2.6.2). title and history
are in common with your list. What about institution, source, references and
comment? All these seem useful to me. Possibly institution and source could
serve the purpose of your summary and project attributes. Maybe the
naming_authority is the same as institution. Many datasets come from an
institution rather than from a named author and contributors. I think such
overlaps should be resolved if we are going to add more recommendations for
global attrs to CF. I see that you have a note at the end which is relevant
to this.

* The THREDDS data types appear to be characterising individual variables, not
files. Perhaps thredds_data_type should be a variable attribute therefore.

* I'm not clear what you mean by date_valid. Is it really helpful to
distinguish so many dates? What would you use them for?

* processing_level seems rather vague. Couldn't that kind of information be
included in the source/summary attributes?

* The spatial and temporal coverage of the data can be deduced from the
coordinate variables. The data variables might have many different such
ranges. This information is redundant and would have to be rewritten if a
subselection is made, so could easily go wrong. Including such attributes
therefore worries me. The same applies to the suggested geospatial_
attributes. This very specific information has more to do with individual
variables than with files.

best wishes

Jonathan
Received on Mon Jun 13 2005 - 11:24:24 BST