John,
Indeed, I'm embarrassed I didn't see the standard name "sea_water_pressure".
That should allow a client like IDV that needs to determine the z
position to use a standard atmosphere to convert "air_pressure" or a
standard ocean to convert "sea_water_pressure".
>
> So let's say I'm making an instrument, and describing the data the instrument produces. This instrument can be deployed in the ocean (sea water), or a lake (fresh water) or a stream (running fresh water). If I label the pressure variable "sea_water_pressure" (the only related choice), isn't that going to be wrong when the instrument is deployed in the lake? Can't we have a water_pressure variable?
For plotting in a client like IDV, it would be helpful to have the
data sets from this instrument have different standard_names depending
on what environment they were deployed in. If deployed in ocean, it
would be "sea_water_pressure", and if in a lake or river, I think it
should probably be a new standard name like "fresh_water_pressure".
If we added a new standard_name simply called "water_pressure", it
certainly could be applied to either fresh or saltwater, but this
would not allow the selection of a "standard ocean" or "standard lake"
profile by a client like IDV.
> While we're at it, it would be useful to have a general term called 'pressure'. Some sensors may work in any environment.
I agree it would be useful to have a standard name of just "pressure",
because you could certainly have a sensor measuring pressure that
spent some of it's time in the air and some in the water. (even
though IDV would not be able to figure out how to convert to
elevation).
Rich
--
Richard P. Signell (508) 457-2229
USGS, 384 Woods Hole Rd.
Woods Hole, MA 02543-1598
Received on Sun Feb 24 2008 - 17:09:40 GMT
