[CF-metadata] hydrosphere

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 09:42:05 +0000

Dear Roy

> I have been using the term 'water column' in our vocabularies to identify
> any body of salt or fresh water. The term 'hydrosphere' has been used for
> the same purpose elsewhere.
>
> I would welcome CF standard names embracing the concept of 'water column'
> under any label as it would firm up the mappings between the BODC
> vocabularies being used by SeaDataNet and CF (although it would weaken
> mappings between CF and GCMD who clearly differentiate between salt and
> fresh water). However, although using the word 'sea' for this concept
> would overcome legacy issues I worry about the potential for confusion.

I'm replying on the email list as I think this is principally a matter of
naming rather than the subgrid convention.

Yes, I think "hydrosphere" would be a possible word to use when we need to
refer to properties of the whole mass of water, in the context where we
currently use "ocean" e.g. for large-scale transports. We also need a word
for the material, which we call sea_water, to refer to its properties such
as salinity, density, velocity and so on. Is there a word which means ocean,
sea, lake or river? In any language?

Cheers

Jonathan
Received on Mon Feb 04 2008 - 02:42:05 GMT