Dear Christiane,
it doesn't come as a surprise to me that observational people in the atmospheric chemistry world tend to ignore things like netcdf and CF. While this also has to do with old habits as you mention, it may be even more a consequence of the operating system which is installed on most data gathering computers, namely Windows. It is much(?) more difficult to work with netcdf files on a Windows system, because the many very useful command line tools (ncdump, ncgen, NCOs, cdos, ...) typically don't exist.
Another (more "scientific") reason is that observational data is rarely as regular as model output. You have missing values, irregular sampling, quality flags, etc. Of course, all of these can be modeled in a data model and format such as netcdf provides it, but this always requires some extra structural thinking, which in the end implies more work. (and if you can then not work with your own data on your computer (see above) ...)
Nevertheless, I can see the value in trying to convince observers to at least approximate some of the metadata concepts defined with CF and to have them contribute to these definitions. But why should they not adopt something like "molefraction_..._in_air"? This is a quantity they ususally measure, isn't it?
...
What I see as more important than getting a zoo of scientific experimentalists to agree on something is that the "operational" standards such as WMO GRIB and BUFR adopt the concepts and terms behind CF. This will over time radiate into the scientific community as well, so one could buy one and get two here ;-) Has there been any effort/progress in linking with the established meteorological community?
Best regards,
Martin
< Dr. Martin G. Schultz, ICG-II, Forschungszentrum J?lich >
< D-52425 J?lich, Germany >
< ph: +49 (0)2461 61 2831, fax: +49 (0)2461 61 8131 >
< email: m.schultz at fz-juelich.de >
< web:
http://www.fz-juelich.de/icg/icg-2/m_schultz >
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Forschungszentrum J?lich GmbH
52425 J?lich
Sitz der Gesellschaft: J?lich
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ts D?ren Nr. HR B 3498
Vorsitzende des Aufsichtsrats: MinDirig'in B?rbel Bru
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Gesch?ftsf?hrung: Prof. Dr. Achim Bachem (Vorsitzender), Dr. Ulric
h Krafft (stellv.
Vorsitzender)
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Received on Mon Nov 12 2007 - 14:03:36 GMT
