Hello Jim/Jonathan,
I'd overlooked that 'binary_mask' had already been used in this context. Although I don't like it (only semantically intuitive to a restricted group of people) then we should stick with it.
Cheers, Roy.
________________________________
From: CF-metadata [cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu] On Behalf Of Jim Biard [jim.biard at noaa.gov]
Sent: 06 September 2012 16:36
To: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu; alison.pamment at stfc.ac.uk
Cc: Heather Brown; Alisa Young
Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] Proposal for standard name "surface_snow_binary_mask"
So, the official request is:
surface_snow_binary_mask
The value is 1 where the snow cover area fraction is greater than a threshold, and 0 elsewhere. The threshold must be specified by associating a coordinate variable with the data variable and giving the coordinate variable a standard name of surface_snow_area_fraction. The values of the coordinate variable are the threshold values for the corresponding subarrays of the data variable.
Grace and peace,
Jim
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<mailto:jim.biard at noaa.gov>
828-271-4900
On Sep 6, 2012, at 10:51 AM, Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory at reading.ac.uk<mailto:j.m.gregory at reading.ac.uk>> wrote:
Dear Jim and Roy
So, to sum up, the standard name and definition would be:
surface_snow_cover_binary_mask: The value is 1 where the snow cover area fraction is greater than a threshold, and 0 elsewhere. The threshold must be specified by associating a scalar coordinate variable with the data variable and giving the scalar coordinate variable a standard name of surface_snow_area_fraction. The value of the scalar coordinate variable is the threshold value.
Does that look/sound right?
Yes, except that I think it should be surface_snow_binary_mask, for consistency
with existing names.
Roy subsequently suggested it should be presence_of_surface_snow. I guess that
would have the same sort of meaning. I don't think we should use that phrase
just for this case, though. There are two existing names with binary_mask and
it's in the guidelines. We could change them all if people prefer to. I would
argue that binary_mask has the advantage of indicating the data variable is 0
and 1. Another way to convey the same info would be with a missing data mask,
and that could have a different standard name.
If many binary_mask (or presence_of) names were requested we could no doubt
devise something more general but there doesn't seem to be a need for that yet.
Best wishes
Jonathan
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