Hi CF folks,
I would like some advice from your group on a name for a COARDS
metadata atttribute to describe a time offset for a field.
First off, I represent the data management side of GHRSST:
http://www.ghrsst-pp.org, which has adopted netCDF and the CF format
for all our sea surface temperature satellite products.
The problem is straightforward. In all files we represent time of
the satellite observations of SST as the following field:
int time(time) ;
time:long_name = "reference time of sst file" ;
time:units = "seconds since 1981-01-01 00:00:00" ;
however, within our files we have many other observations or model
predictions of other fields (observed or predicted at different
times) and we would like to propose something like a
"offset_from_time" field that represents the time difference in
seconds from "time" above. An example might be :
byte wind_speed(time, nj, ni) ;
wind_speed:long_name = "wind speed" ;
wind_speed:units = "m s-1" ;
wind_speed:_FillValue = -128b ;
wind_speed:add_offset = 0.f ;
wind_speed:scale_factor = 1.f ;
wind_speed:valid_min = -127b ;
wind_speed:valid_max = 127b ;
wind_speed:coordinates = "lon lat" ;
wind_speed: offset_from_time = 3600s
wind_speed:offset_from_time_units: "seconds"
Looking over the COARDS/CF documentation I found on the web, I could
not find anything that describes what I would like to do. What I have
proposed..... does it sound reasonable or have I overlooked existing
COARDS metadata attributes that would fufill our needs ???
Any advice appreciated
--
~ed
Edward M. Armstrong
Physical Oceanography DAAC Tel: 818 393-6710
Jet Propulsion Laboratory Fax: 818 393-2710
edward.armstrong at jpl.nasa.gov
Received on Mon Dec 18 2006 - 11:49:10 GMT
