[CF-metadata] Modification of some existing CF standard names for chemical constituents

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2008 19:41:39 +0000

Dear Christiane

> old: mass_concentration_of_sulfate_aerosol_in_air
> This should be mass_concentration_of_sulfate_DRY_aerosol_in_air
>
> old: atmosphere_content_of_sulfate_aerosol
> atmosphere_MASS_content_of_sulfate_DRY_aerosol

I presume that when these names were introduced, dry aerosol was not
specified. I would tend to assume that by default "aerosol" would mean
"ambient". What do you think? I can see that it is a good idea to be precise
about whether it is dry or ambient, but perhaps the existing names should be
aliased to "ambient" ones rather than "dry" ones.

> old: optical_thickness_of_atmosphere_layer_due_to_aerosol
> The other optical thickness names are built like this:
> atmosphere_optical_thickness_due_to_X
> For consistency, I would suggest to change the first name to
> atmosphere_layer_optical_thickness_due_to_aerosol

I don't agree with that because all the existing 31 names with atmosphere_layer
have of_atmosphere_layer or in_atmosphere_layer. However I have thought for
some time that we don't really need the "atmosphere layer" names. We could
just specify "atmosphere" and allow the bounds of the vertical coordinate to
indicate what layer it means. That would be a simplification.

> old: surface_carbon_dioxide_mole_flux
> new: I am not sure
> tendency_of_moles_of_carbon_dioxide_at_the_surface
> tendency_of_moles_of_carbon_dioxide_in_atmosphere_due_to_net_surface_flux

Perhaps it could be described as a tendency of atmosphere mole content. It
is interesting that you currently have no names for surface fluxes, though,
because they are all described as tendencies of atmospheric content. You
could have a pattern such as surface_upward_mass|mole_flux_of_X. Is that
a natural concept to consider in a chemistry model? We have surface fluxes
of heat and water.

Best wishes

Jonathan
Received on Fri Nov 07 2008 - 12:41:39 GMT