Hi John,
I think if you look at the various molar primary productivity standard names you'll see that the decision has been made in the past to define 'productivity' as 'production per unit area'. It might be less confusing if you used
net_primary_production_of_carbon_per_unit_volume
It might also be helpful to constrain this new standard name to the marine environment as production per unit volume doesn't fit the terrestrial domain as well as production per unit area - say something like:
net_primary_production_of_carbon_per_unit_volume_of_sea_water
Cheers, Roy.
Please note that I now work part-time from Tuesday to Thursday. E-mail response on other days is possible but not guaranteed!
-----Original Message-----
From: CF-metadata [mailto:cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu] On Behalf Of John Graybeal
Sent: 05 June 2013 03:07
To: CF Metadata List
Subject: [CF-metadata] new standard name for primary productivity of carbon per unit volume
I would like to request a CF standard name.
Name: net_primary_productivity_of_carbon_per_unit_volume
Units: kg m-3 s-1
Definition: Net primary productivity is the excess of gross_primary_producivity (rate of synthesis of biomass per unit volume from inorganic precursors by autotrophs, or "producers", especially by photosynthesising plants using sunlight for energy) over the rate at which they themselves respire some of this biomass (plant_respiration, assuming all producers to be plants). "Productivity of carbon" refers to the production of biomass expressed as the mass of carbon which it contains.
There is an existing net_primary_productivity_of_carbon, expressed per unit area. As we are making a data set available which is integrated over a vertical extent, producing values with units to match (i.e., kg m-3 s-1), a new standard name is needed.
Note: It appears the definition of net primary productivity may assume the value will be measured as per unit area. This probably needs to be corrected.
John
------------------------------------
John Graybeal
Senior Data Manager, Metadata and Semantics
T +1 (408) 675-5545
F +1 (408) 616-1626
skype: graybealski
Marinexplore
920 Stewart Drive
Sunnyvale, CA
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Received on Wed Jun 05 2013 - 08:54:42 BST
