[CF-metadata] water level with/without datum

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:47:13 +0000

Dear Roy

> I have concerns about having separate names for river, lake and sea. If you have them for height, then the logic would extend to temperature. I have temperature data from a boat that started in the North Sea, went up the Humber and then up to the navigable limit of the Yorkshire Ouse. I would much prefer a single Standard Name across the whole dataset.

I share that concern, but I didn't have a use-case where it would be a problem
to have separate names, so thanks for that.

> My suggestion of 'water body' as the generic term didn't get any reaction. Was that acceptance or did nobody notice it?

I noticed it, yes, thanks! It is a correct generic term, of course, but I feel
it would cause a loss of clarity to replace "sea" with "water body" in existing
standard names e.g. water_body_surface_height, water_body_water_temperature,
water_body_water_speed and water_body_ice_thickness are all unfamiliar terms,
whereas sea_surface_height, sea_water_temperature, sea_water_speed and
sea_ice_thickness are all recognisable. In the particular case of Jeff's,
"water body surface height" is not a term that Google finds, whereas
"sea surface height", "lake surface height" and "river surface height"
do all exist.

More cumbersome than "water body", but clearer I think, would be to use the
phrase "sea/lake/river" (I think "/" is a permitted character) e.g.
sea/lake/river_surface_height, sea/lake/river_water_temperature. We could
provide such names of this type as are requested, for generic uses like yours,
but keep the "sea" names as well.

In a case such as yours, would it be acceptable to use "sea" all the time,
even when it's a river?

Best wishes

Jonathan
Received on Tue Feb 23 2010 - 01:47:13 GMT