Dear Jonathan and Martin,
I don't normally wade in muddy waters, but perhaps a separate
perspective would be useful. Problem is that I'm hopelessly uneducated
in this area.
I always thought that "burden" referred to some amount (either moles per
unit area or mass per unit area) of a chemical species in the *entire
atmospheric column*, extending from the surface to the top of the
atmosphere. Is this correct?
If it is invariably the total column amount, then I think
atmosphere_mole_burden_of_X is a more specific definition than
moles_of_X_in_atmosphere, which I should think could refer to moles per
unit area or moles per unit volume, or even total number of moles in
some limited region of the atmosphere. Of course the units attribute
should make this clear.
If, on the other hand, atmosphere_mole_burden_of_X is more general than
total column amount per unit area, then I think moles_of_X_in_atmosphere
is better because it is plainer English.
Forgive me, if you've already gone over this ground before.
cheers,
Karl
Martin Juckes wrote:
> Dear Jonathan,
>
> thanks, we'll see if there are any other comments. But I don't think it is
> fair to refer to the IPCC as a specialist community. I keep referring to the
> usage there because it has gone through exhaustive review and is designed for
> a wider audience than, for instance, articles in JGR which really are
> targetted at a specialist community.
>
> cheers,
> Martin
>
>> From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory at reading.ac.uk>
>> Subject: [CF-metadata] standard name proposal for CCMVal
>> To: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
>> Message-ID: <20080222135725.GA12861 at met.reading.ac.uk>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>> Dear Martin
>
>> There have been many questions like this in the past, and there's not a right
>> answer to be discovered - it's just a judgement. I agreed with you about
>> "burden" before anyway, as you know; I took it up again because we had not
>> had that discussion on this email list and because "burden" was questioned
>> again. On the one side is the usage in the specialist field, and on the other
>> is what is most readily understood by non-specialists, which is important too
>> because CF metadata is used across disciplines. CF stdnames are somewhere
>> between terminology and definitions, I think. Terminology is convenient,
>> while definitions are self-describing.
>
>> Anyway, if the majority is for "burden" that's fine with me.
>
>> Cheers
>
>> Jonathan
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Received on Fri Feb 22 2008 - 11:01:34 GMT
