All, I meant to send the following to the list yesterday but I don't think it came through... Hopefully this one makes it through.
New to the list, Rich Signell asked me if I'd respond to John's question below. For what its worth:
I've done a fair amount of thinking and asked a lot of questions re:
> what to use for the default ellipsoid when
> these are not specified. It seems to me the obvious candidates are 1)
> spherical earth with a standard radius, or 2) WGS84 ellipsoid.
I have come to the conclusion that WGS84 is probably the best default. Although really, without a datum definition a dataset is incomplete (according to geographic information science) and an error should be thrown.
My reasoning for this is that I have not been able to find an atmospheric scientist who has converted ground based model forcing data locations into the spherical datum used by their model grid. This basically means that the grid's geometry calculations are out of sync with the actual location of the forcings. So the eventual model output or reanalysis or whatever, is actually most similar, location wise, to a geodetic datum (like WGS84)
However,
Things get complicated with projected coordinate systems based on spherical datums. The issue there is that to properly unproject, you need to use the math associated with the spherical datum. You then have lat/lon positions with spherical datum indicated in its metadata. But the original data was likely not converted to the spherical datum but rather reassigned, so you have to change the metadata (hack!) without transforming to the new, correct datum. We deal with this by using 2D axis definitions and indicating that the lat/lon is on whatever datum we think it came from.
Hopefully that is helpful,
p.s. Welcome back John!
Dave
On Feb 2, 2011, at 7:01 AM, Rich Signell wrote:
> John & Co,
>
>> Also, they are wondering what to use for the default ellipsoid when these
>> are not specified. It seems to me the obvious candidates are 1) spherical
>> earth with a standard radius, or 2) WGS84 ellipsoid.
>
> I imagine the vast majority of netcdf datasets fall into this camp. I
> had an interesting talk yesterday with Dave Blodgett, who pointed out
> that even though most models are running on a spherical earth, they
> mostly likely do not transform the initial bathymetry/topography,
> coastline, and other model inputs into spherical earth coordinates,
> but just leave them in their original datum, which is usually WGS84.
> So it seems that your 2) would be more likely to be right.
>
> And just to make sure that CFers are on the same page, if the datum is
> actually known to be different, it can be specified using the CF datum
> parameters ("inverse_flattening" and "earth_radius", or
> "semi_major_axis" and "semi_minor_axis" in CF 1.5
> (http://cf-pcmdi.llnl.gov/documents/cf-conventions/1.5/apf.html) where
> the doc now states: "The attributes which describe the ellipsoid and
> prime meridian may be included, when applicable, with any grid
> mapping."
>
> -Rich
>
> On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 2:40 PM, John Caron <caron at unidata.ucar.edu> wrote:
>> Apparently ESRI is willing to add support for CF 1.5 grid_mapping attributes
>> for ellipsoidal-earth/geodetic-datum definitions in the Grid Mappings and
>> Projections specification.
>>
>> They are looking for sample data, especially using ellipsoidal parameters
>> (semi_major_axis/semi_minor_axis/inverse_flattening). Does anyone have any?
>>
>> Also, they are wondering what to use for the default ellipsoid when these
>> are not specified. It seems to me the obvious candidates are 1) spherical
>> earth with a standard radius, or 2) WGS84 ellipsoid.
>>
>> Opinions?
>>
>> John
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> CF-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
>> http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Richard P. Signell (508) 457-2229
> USGS, 384 Woods Hole Rd.
> Woods Hole, MA 02543-1598
Received on Wed Feb 02 2011 - 06:19:06 GMT
