Can we please resurrect the topic of a grammar for standard names, which
Jonathan and I have raised in the past? - see
http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/pipermail/cf-metadata/2010/007093.html for
an entry point. This discussion illustrates as clearly as can be that
the time has come to really get to grips with this - ultimately there
really is no alternative. If this forum is not the right place to
develop this in detail, then I'm very happy to be contacted off-list.
Cheers,
Robert
On 01/03/11 21:07, Seth McGinnis wrote:
> I'm in favor of a generalized system for automatically constructing new
> standard names by applying quantifiers to established ones. In fact, when I
> first encountered the Guidelines for Construction of CF Standard Names, I
> thought that's what it *was*, and it took me a while to understand that you
> still had to actually propose the standard name and have it accepted.
> Obviously there are potential complications if chaining together multiple
> quantifiers is allowed, but for simple derived names, I think it sounds like a
> great idea.
>
> Case in point: I've been meaning to propose two new standard names myself, and
> hadn't gotten around to writing the email about it yet:
>
> histogram_of_spell_length_of_days_with_lwe_thickness_of_precipitation_amount_above_threshold
> histogram_of_spell_length_of_days_with_lwe_thickness_of_precipitation_amount_below_threshold
>
> (I've simply applied the "histogram_of" modifier to two existing names here, so
> that we can record the climatological distributions of wet and dry spells.)
>
> This seems like exactly the kind of thing that could be automated away with
> some general rules, no? Or is my proposal more controversial than I think it
> is?
>
> Cheers,
>
> --Seth
>
>
>
> On Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:15:13 +0000
> Jonathan Gregory<j.m.gregory at reading.ac.uk> wrote:
>> 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.
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Received on Tue Mar 01 2011 - 16:16:01 GMT
