[CF-metadata] Proposed standard names for biological model outputs

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2006 15:59:46 +0000

Dear Roy

> It would be helpful to have definitions with the standard name for the biological entities ( "diatom", "phytoplankton" etc.) as there is some inconsistency in usage. In particular, whether phytoplankton includes cyanobacteria and/or free-floating macroalgae, the size limits of microzoo and mesozoo and the meaning of detritus (dead biological material?).

It might be that models are rather vague about these categories. For standard
names, that does not matter, since their aim is to establish which quantities
from different sources are to be regarded as comparable. For example, if
cyanobacteria do not exist in the model world, it is not really defined
whether phytoplankton include cyanobacteria, and this vagueness is no problem
for comparing model results. However for observational purposes the same names
may need more precise definitions.

> We also need to be aware of how the observational biological community would describe the measurand - my guess is 90% would go for 'Nitrogen biomass' rather than a concentration based term

We give standard names to whatever quantities people want to name, in
principle. The choice of which quantities it would be better to use in models
or datasets is not really within our remit, I tend to think.

> Note that we already have "moles_of_nitrate_per_unit_mass_in_sea_water" and therefore the syntax "moles_of_nitrate_per_unit_volume_in_sea_water" would be more consistent

That is true. The reason for those was that molarity and molality didn't seem
self-explanatory terms. However I would suspect mole_concentration (= molarity
isn't it) is pretty obvious, and we do already have some mass_concentration
standard names (kg m-3) with which it would be consistent.

Cheers

Jonathan
Received on Mon Dec 04 2006 - 08:59:46 GMT