Dear All,
At BADC we are preparing to archive some data generated by a group at Oxford University who are working on a climate model of the Martian atmosphere. The data will be archived as CF-compliant netCDF files. Many of the model variables are the same as those used in earth simulations, e.g., air temperature, u and v wind components, surface atmospheric pressure, and for all these we will use existing standard names. However, there are a small number of variables for which there are no existing standard names. Therefore, we would like to propose the following new names:
carbon_dioxide_ice_amount; kg m-2
This is the mass per unit area of frozen carbon dioxide on the Martian surface.
atmosphere_optical_thickness_due_to_dust_dry_aerosol; 1
This follows the pattern of the existing name atmosphere_optical_thickness_due_to_dust_ambient_aerosol and is defined in an analogous way.
aerocentric_longitude; degree
'Aerocentric longitude' is a widely used term within the Mars modelling community and indicates the season within the Martian year according to the sun's apparent motion relative to the planet's equator. Zero degrees is defined as the northern hemisphere vernal equinox, i.e., the ascending node of the apparent seasonal motion of the Sun on the planet's equator [
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/mars24/help/notes.html]. Thus 90, 180 and 270 degrees indicate, respectively, the summer solstice, autumnal equinox and winter solstice.
We would welcome comments on these proposals.
Best wishes,
Alison
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Alison Pamment Tel: +44 1235 778065
NCAS/British Atmospheric Data Centre Fax: +44 1235 446314
STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Email: alison.pamment at stfc.ac.uk
R25, 2.22
Harwell Oxford, Didcot, OX11 0QX, U.K.
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Received on Tue Jan 25 2011 - 07:49:55 GMT
