[CF-metadata] standard names for variables?in?'raw?engineering' units

From: Karl Taylor <taylor13>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:19:42 -0700

John,

Can you remind me what you have proposed in place of
ctd_fluorometer_voltage for the example under discussion? Would
"fluorometer_reading" be an appropriate standard name, and you could
attach a units attribute indicating the measurement is in volts. (The
thing being measured is clearly *not* temperature, even though you might
be able to estimate the temperature based on the measurement, so I see
no reason to include temperature in the standard_name.)

Karl


John Graybeal wrote:
> Thank you all for all your thoughts on this.
>
> Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory at reading.ac.uk> 03/12/09 9:57 PM >>>
>
>> I don't really know what it is, of course, but it sounds like it could
>> have a standard name of ctd_fluorometer_voltage and units of V. <snip>
>> Here, the quantity being named relates specifically to a means of
>> measurement, not to the final product.
>
>
> I must quibble. The quantity being named relates specifically to the
> _units_ of the measurement, not the means of measurement. And the reason
> this (new standard name) must be done is that Standard Names are
> specifically tied to units (via the canonical units requirement), and so
> the strange unit forces a different standard name.
>
> And so for purest reflection of meaning, we are back to something like
> 'variant_unit' (instead of 'raw'). I discourage incorporating the unit
> in the standard name ('voltage' in Jonathan's example) because there is
> no way to know if *this* temperature_voltage variable is interoperable
> with *that* temperature_voltage, unless attributes for conversion to
> canonical units are provided. So the units attribute can name the
> units, and this standard name should just make clear that the units are
> not canonical units.
>
> And, can we make it an item in appendix C, please?
>
>> What are example of non-udunits? V is a udunit, all right. Perhaps a
>> non-udunit
>> is just a count of something? Does that need units? It could simply be
>> regarded as dimensionless.
>
>
> Addressed in other thread; no non-udunits have been identified so far
> relating to raw geophysical data.
>
> John
>
> --------------
> John Graybeal <mailto:graybeal at mbari.org> -- 831-775-1956
> Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
> Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http:// marinemetadata.org
>
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Received on Thu Mar 12 2009 - 17:19:42 GMT