Hi Jonathan, all,
Jonathan Gregory wrote:
>> - Vertical coordinate values (heights, altitudes etc) are often
>> inferred from other quantities (esp. pressure in both air and water).
>> Since CF is expanding to include in situ data, can we express this
>> somehow, so that users know that the coordinate value depends on
>> certain assumptions?
>>
>
> Yes, we could, but I would not make that distinction in the standard name, if
> the intention is just to supply some extra information about how the quantity
> was obtained. That does not make different kinds of quantity. On the other
> hand, if the quantities are regarded as distinct, so that you might have
> several of them in the same dataset, and wanted to compare them with the
> corresponding ones in another dataset, perhaps an argument could be made
> for distinguishing them by standard name. However, another attribute might
> still be a better way, I suspect. We would need some use-cases to discuss
> this when it arises.
>
I'm not sure about completely capturing the assumptions or precise
calculations/transformation of the relationship. But a vertical CRS
description similar to current grid mappings seems a reasonable approach
to capture this relationship. And in particular might be a good place to
explicitly define the relationship between a coordinate variable and an
auxiliary coordinate variable.
Ethan
--
Ethan R. Davis Telephone: (303) 497-8155
Software Engineer Fax: (303) 497-8690
UCAR Unidata Program Center E-mail: edavis at ucar.edu
P.O. Box 3000
Boulder, CO 80307-3000 http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
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Received on Mon Sep 29 2008 - 16:32:45 BST
