[CF-metadata] standard_name modifiers

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:15:13 +0000

Dear Martin

Even 24 such cases wouldn't be really a problem. However, I don't feel strongly
about this myself. This is not quite the original use of standard_name
modifiers, which is to describe variables containing ancillary quantities.
However, it seems to be a reasonable use of the mechanism, since it's a
derived quantity. (A combination of quantities would be more difficult to
deal with, as we have discussed.) I feel that opinions from others on whether
we should make this change would be helpful.

Best wishes

Jonathan

On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 09:14:18AM +0100, Schultz, Martin wrote:

> maybe I am fighting a lost battle here, but let me try to argue once more for a generalized solution, i.e. the addition of "anomaly" as a standard name modifier. I don't like the idea of adding a new standard name for each new anomaly: i) this seems illogical and new users will ask "why is there an anomaly defined for temperature, but nor for precipitation?", ii) past experience has shown that it takes time to get new standard names adopted, and if new use cases come up (as they are bound to be for something as essential as anomalies) it may discourage people to even go for standard names for these variables. Why not try to make the system as systematic as possible? I don't want to argue against a pragmatic approach, but if you decide to change the anomalies from individual standard names to a modifier in three years, the effort might be much larger, the confusion will be greater and other "operators" with similar problems will come along. So, my suggestion would be to deprecate the use of air_pressure
_anomaly, air_temperature_anomaly, geopotential_height_anomaly and surface_temperature_anomaly now and introduce "anomaly" as a modifier. It's only replacing an underescore by a blank anyhow ;-)
>
> As we just developed some tools to compute multi-model means and model anomalies for the TFHTAP data sets, I would otherwise have to come up with a list of ~20 new "_anomaly" standard names. So, besides what I see a rational argument (above), I have a personal reason for arguing so vehemently.
Received on Mon Feb 28 2011 - 10:15:13 GMT