Jonathan,
The point is, the information in the variable *is* coordinate information,
and there *is* a domain/range relationship between the coordinate
information and one or more measurements, even when the content of the
"auxiliary coordinate variable" does not (for more than one possible
reason) meet the rather strict requirements for being designated as a
coordinate variable (1-D, monotonic, etc). I want to capture that
relationship in a clear fashion within my files.
What if we say something along the lines of, "Applications should treat the
data as missing where the auxiliary coordinates are missing when plotting
data."? Would that resolve the problem?
Grace and peace,
Jim
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 11:04 AM, Jonathan Gregory <
j.m.gregory at reading.ac.uk> wrote:
> Dear all
>
> If we say, "applications are free to assume that data is missing where the
> auxiliary coordinates are missing" (John Caron's words), it means that
> applications can also choose to do something else, such as trying to guess
> what the location is and plotting it or doing some calculation with that
> guess. As far as the data-provider is concerned, that behaviour is
> unpredictable (John Graybeal's word), since different analysis software
> will
> do different things. Some of them may be appropriate, some of them might
> not
> be. This doesn't sound good to me, and it's why I tend to think that
> missing
> values in aux coords should not be allowed where there is non-missing data.
>
> To repeat, that is not an argument against storing the information in the
> file, just for not for labelling it as an aux coord variable. In a second
> step,
> the data-provider might reprocess the file and fill in the missing values.
> Then
> it can safely be an aux coord var. It is now reliable, since the values
> have
> been estimated by an appropriate method by the original data provider.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Jonathan
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>
--
Jim Biard
Research Scholar
Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites
Remote Sensing and Applications Division
National Climatic Data Center
151 Patton Ave, Asheville, NC 28801-5001
jim.biard at noaa.gov
828-271-4900
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