[CF-metadata] CF standard names for chemical constituents and aerosols

From: Philip J. Cameronsmith1 <cameronsmith1>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:10:23 -0700 (PDT)

On Tue, 21 Oct 2008, Jonathan Gregory wrote:

> I think that a stronger argument for this than the size of the standard name
> table, which should be no problem for software, is that chemical models may
> internally have array dimensions for species, in which case it would be
> natural to write out arrays of results. Are the models indeed like that?

Hi,

I generally agree with Jonathan, but my purpose here is only to answer
Jonathan's question (above).

Every major atmospheric chemistry model I know of keeps their species in a
single array within the code. However, on output there are some models
that keep the whole array together as a 5d array on output (lat, lon, lev,
species, time), and there are some that output each specie as a separate
4D array (lat, lon, lev, time).

I expect that most models could change between the two output modes
without too much heartache.

Having worked with both output styles, I personally prefer to output the
species separately, because I find it easier when working with multiple
chemical mechanisms and multiple models (and would therefore recommend
using separate species for CF too).

Note: different aerosol sizes in models can be handled as multiple species
or as an additional dimension.

Best wishes,

      Philip

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Dr Philip Cameron-Smith Atmospheric, Earth, and Energy Division
pjc at llnl.gov Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
+1 925 4236634 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, CA94550, USA
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Received on Tue Oct 21 2008 - 17:10:23 BST