Hi Roy
Glad that it looks like Steve's specfiic problem isn't a problem given the name change and definition you found.
However:
You've opened Pandora's box a bit (we've been hammering around the edges for a while).
I can feel the o-word coming on ...
It's been incoming in the family chemistry sense, and in clouds, and anywhere where we have a geophysical quantity that has a generic type and specific sub-types. In the chemistry case it's about what equations the model can support, and in the observation cases it can be about distinguishing between what can be observed - some things can only observe/simulate at the generic level, others at more specific levels.
My feeling is that people should mark up their data with standard names that most accurate define what has been measured (but not how). However, to compare things in this situation we need the relationships between the standard names ... so folk wanting to compare apples and oranges can do so at the fruit level.
> containing two types of 'chlorophyll' with the expectation that the Standard Name will identify and >distinguish them. Do we need some expectation management to discourage this?
Well, no, if they are two different types of chlorophyll then there should be two different standard names (or 176), but it should also be clear that they are types of chlorophyll ... and we should have a standard name for that, but the data wouldn't neeed to be marked up with it, that'd be implicit in the relationships that we standardise.
That seems like an obvious goal ...
Bryan
--
Bryan Lawrence
Director of Environmental Archival and Associated Research
(NCAS/British Atmospheric Data Centre and NCEO/NERC NEODC)
STFC, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Phone +44 1235 445012; Fax ... 5848;
Web: home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence
Received on Wed Jul 29 2009 - 02:55:38 BST
