[CF-metadata] CF standard names for chemical constituentsandaerosols (resulting from a GRIB2 proposal)

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:16:12 +0100

Dear Martin and Philip

IUPAC names: I agree that a pragmatic approach is the right one, and as you
say we have already gone that way in adopting some non-IUPAC names previously
(we have discussed this before, in fact). If IUPAC "approves" some non-
systematic names, that is helpful too. Would it be practicable to take this as
a criterion for use in CF? In any case, it is a good idea to include the IUPAC
name in the description of the quantity. The concern I had was that it could
be confusing to users of CF standard names if there wasn't a clear pattern
for when IUPAC names were used. An advantage of having a rule is that it helps
users to remember the names, I think. That's why I was wondering whether it
would be satisfactory to have acetic acid along with ethane, ethene and ethyne.
However, some arbitrariness may be unavoidable.

"total" or nothing: Yes, if
  mole_fraction_of_inorganic_bromine_in_air
  mole_fraction_of_reactive_nitrogen_in_air
are clear enough, we could introduce these and makes aliases of the names with
"total".

Best wishes

Jonathan
Received on Fri Sep 26 2008 - 01:16:12 BST