My working hypothesis is that optimum combination of detail and generality is medium + property, e.g., sea_water_wave_frequency or sea_surface_wave_frequency. (Based on the notion that finding a bunch of frequencies is not useful to anyone, including the finder -- you have to find a sea_surface_wave_frequency to be reasonably confident you can use it for what you want.)
Somewhere I thought I read that simple properties like frequency were discouraged in CF (and in fact, many are missing). I looked but could not find this guidance -- am I remembering that incorrectly?
John
At 11:09 AM +0100 3/31/08, Pamment, JA (Alison) wrote:
>Hi Nan,
>
>>
>> One of our parameters is sea_surface_wave_variance_spectral_density,
>> with coordinate variables time and frequency.
>>
>> Sea_surface_wave_frequency is an accepted standard name, but I
>> would like to know why 'frequency' is not preferable, being more
>> generic. As an analogy, we can use 'depth' as the coordinate variable
>> for temperatures, and are not so specific as to require
>> sea_water_temperature_depth. Is specifying sea_surface_wave
> > really necessary, and might it not be misleading if the parameter
> > is not actually "plain" sea_surface_waves?
>>
>
>I'm not an expert in this area myself, so I'm not quite sure what you
>mean by "plain" sea_surface_waves. However, to respond to your general
>point, I agree that sea_surface_wave_frequency is very specific.
>The original proposal (see
>http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/pipermail/cf-metadata/2006/000958.html) was for
>wave_frequency and it was submitted along with quite a list of other sea
>surface wave names. I suspect that it was changed for consistency with
>the other names. I think that we need to at least use the term
>wave_frequency rather than simply 'frequency' because it is not the
>only kind of frequency in standard names. We have the names
>sound_frequency, which could in fact be described by wave_frequency, and
>brunt_vaisala_frequency_in_air, which is a parameter that relates to the
>static stability of air and is useful for determining whether gravity
>waves will be generated, for example, by flow over orography. I think
>that we could use wave_frequency quite adequately for fluid dynamical
>waves, sound waves and electromagnetic waves independent of the medium
>in which they occur. Would you be happy with wave_frequency?
>
>Best wishes,
>Alison
>
>------
>Alison Pamment Tel: +44 1235 778065
>NCAS/British Atmospheric Data Centre Fax: +44 1235 446314
>Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Email: J.A.Pamment at rl.ac.uk
>Chilton, Didcot, OX11 0QX, U.K.
>
>_______________________________________________
>CF-metadata mailing list
>CF-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
>http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
--
----------
John Graybeal <mailto:graybeal at mbari.org> -- 831-775-1956
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Marine Metadata Initiative: http://marinemetadata.org || Shore Side Data System: http://www.mbari.org/ssds
Received on Mon Mar 31 2008 - 09:09:43 BST
