[CF-metadata] can a cell method be an attribute of an auxiliary coordinate variable ?

From: Jonathan Gregory <j.m.gregory>
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2014 13:10:34 +0000

Dear Randy

The usual choice would be the standard_name to refer to variation over an
axis for which there is no netCDF dimension. "area" is provided as a special
shorthand for the *combination* of horizontal axes. The advantage of it is that
you don't have specify what these might be e.g. longitude and latitude,
projection_x_coordinate and projection_y_coordinate. It's more obvious (I
think) to the user of the data if you code "area: mean" than if you code
"latitude: longitude: mean", for instance.

Cheers

Jonathan


> Your recommendation of changing the cell method name from the
> standard_name to "area" is analogous to the recommendation you provided me
> at the start of this message thread.
>
> In para 7.3.4 (Cell methods when there are no coordinates). the first
> sentence is:
>
> "To provide an indication that a particular cell method is relevant to the
> data without having to provide a precise description of the corresponding
> cell, the "name" that appears in a "name: method" pair may be an
> appropriate standard_name (which identifies the dimension) or the string,
> "area" (rather than the name of a scalar coordinate variable or a dimension
> with a coordinate variable)."
>
> Can you explain when standard_name serving as the name (rather than
> "area") is appropriate ?
Received on Wed Mar 05 2014 - 06:10:34 GMT