Hi John,
ISO-8601 allows timestamps to any resolution from year to millisecond, so 2010, 2010-10, 2010-10-20 are all valid so the string can be any length from 4 to 27
(e.g. 2010-10-20T14:53:00.000Z-15), unless restricted through an 8601 profile (as many communities do)
Cheers, Roy.
-----Original Message-----
From: cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu [mailto:cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu] On Behalf Of John Caron
Sent: 20 October 2010 13:36
To: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] New standard names for satellite obs data
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
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Received on Wed Oct 20 2010 - 07:40:05 BST
