[CF-metadata] mixing ratio

From: Christiane Textor <christiane.textor>
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:13:48 +0100

Dear Jonathan and others,

I am sorry for the delay of my responses to the CF discussions. I now
sending answers to all pending messages.

In your last email you have summarized the discussion about the mass
mixing ratios:

> mass_fraction_of_X_in_air
> for all X and say that we are deliberately vague about whether air is ambient
> or dry


or we use

> mass_fraction_of_X_in_ambient_air
> mass_fraction_of_X_in_dry_air
> That involves aliasing quite a lot of existing names, but would not be vague.

I would prefer the second option, because it is clear. What do others
think?

For the particular case of mass_fraction_of_water_vapor_in_??_air
you suggest to stay with the existing humidity_mixing_ratio as a term in
general use.

Maybe I have missed the recent discussion, but to my understand, the
mixing ratio is generally defined as
x/(sum_of_all_components_including_x), which would mean in our case the
humidity_mixing_ratio would be equivalent to
mass_fraction_of_water_vapor_in_ambient_air.
For example, on the web I found that the mole mixing ratio of N2 in air
is 78%, which means that my definition of the mixing ration is applied.
Could you please comment on this? At least a comment on the definition
of humidity_mixing_ratio would be good.

Best regards,
Christiane
Received on Sun Nov 23 2008 - 10:13:48 GMT