[CF-metadata] New standard names for satellite obs data

From: John Caron <caron>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 06:35:43 -0600

On 10/19/2010 12:55 PM, Mike Grant wrote:
> On 19/10/10 14:21, Aleksandar Jelenak wrote:
>> Actually, I don't think it is possible to use 'time' standard name in
>> such cases. If I correctly interpret CF rules for using standard names,
>> 'time' data can be only in the physically-equivalent units to "seconds".
>> Strings, being dimensionless, do not qualify.
>
> Out of curiosity, why do you want to store time as strings? It's easy
> to create those strings from numerical values, and numerical values are
> easier to handle in code (and in netcdf-3, as Seth said).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mike.

I made a proposal a few years ago to allow ISO-8601 time strings to be an allowable form of time coordinates, which was not accepted. I would be interested to hear what your reasons are to use this form vs udunits (eg "secs since reference")? ISO-8601 time strings are fixed length (21 I think?) so handling in netcdf-3 is not so hard.

Your proposal would amount to standardizing how to include ISO-8601 time strings, but the standard udunits time coordinate would still be required.

Clarification of your purpose might clarify the name. At first glance, I might prefer "time_iso8601" over "time_label_iso8601".

John
Received on Wed Oct 20 2010 - 06:35:43 BST