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[CF-metadata] udunits time unit question

From: Karl Taylor <taylor13>
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2011 09:11:51 -0700

Dear all,

I think "3 days since 1970-01-01" is a sensible statement, with "3"
being the number and "days since 1970-01-01" being the units. Would
anybody normally interpret "5 3 days since 1970-01-01" as meaning "15
days since 1970-01-01"? If not, then I don't think we should allow a
unit of "3 days since 1970-01-01". This would be just as confusing as
allowing a unit of "3 meters" and interpreting "5 3 meters" as "15
meters". Since we don't allow "3 meters" as a unit, why should we allow
"3 days since 1970-01-01" as a unit?

Best regards,
Karl

On 3/26/11 6:46 AM, Don Murray wrote:
> John-
>
> On 3/25/11 4:54 PM, John Caron wrote:
>> On 3/22/2011 6:53 AM, John Caron wrote:
>>> Consider:
>>>
>>> int time(sample=1001);
>>> :long_name = "Measurement time";
>>> :standard_name = "time";
>>> :units = "days since 1970-01-01";
>>>
>>> vs
>>>
>>> int time(sample=1001);
>>> :long_name = "Measurement time";
>>> :standard_name = "time";
>>> :units = "3 days since 1970-01-01";
>>>
>>> values = 1, 2, 3, ...
>>>
>>> are these equivalent or does the second one mean every 3 days ? Is the
>>> second one illegal ?
>> Im am going to assume that the second form is illegal, that is, you may
>> not have a number in front of the unit in a "time coordinate unit" (CF
>> section 4.4)
> I agree with Beno that it should be legal. GrADS gives their units in
> terms of N (minutes, hours, days, months, years) from a reference time.
> When I wrote the GrADS IOSP, I originally was using this syntax,
> because then your time coordinate values are 0,1,2,..... However, 3mo
> intervals came up with the problems that you have shown here, so I
> converted everything to hours since the base date. But, if we had a
> library that would compute 3mo since 2011-04-01 as 2011-07-01, I would
> revert to that syntax because it is closer to the original GrADS definition.
>
> Don
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