[CF-metadata] Separating geolocation/timing co-ordinates from measurement data

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:43:44 +0100

Dear Steve

> We have multiple satellite geophysical data products which share the
> same set of geo-location and timing co-ordinates. To avoid product
> bloat (e.g. from approx. 30GB to 90GB per orbit) we are considering
> the possibility of having a single file storing the co-ordinates but
> we think that this conflicts with our desire to be CF Convention
> conformant. Is that correct?

It is technically non-conformant but it has already been done in other
applications, including CMIP5 in some respects. I think we need a convention
for this, but we have not agreed one. My suggestion is that it should be OK
to give the name of the coordinate variables in the file where they reside.
Software will have to regard several files as one dataset, in which case it
would be able to find the coordinate variables by name. Are they 1D (Unidata)
coordinate variables, or auxiliary coordinate variable (named by the CF
coordinates attr) that you want to omit?

Best wishes

Jonathan
Received on Wed Apr 28 2010 - 08:43:44 BST