Hi Mark,
It is a worry if the definition is a repetition or variant of the words in the name. In particular, the word 'realization' will be meaningful to modelers/forecasters but not universally.
My first desire was to generalize the term (e.g., 'how many entities are in a collection of that type of entity'), but I suspect that will be annoying to the primary users. So can we make it specific and say
In a model or operational forecast, the number of member realizations within a given ensemble. This provides context for any specific realization, for example orienting a member relative to its original group (even if the group is no longer intact).
Or else, define what we mean by 'realization' and 'ensemble'.
Reviewing this and going back to your original request, there is still a likely point of confusion for users -- it isn't obvious that "given ensemble" refers not to the currently constituted collection, but to the one originally created with this realization.
> In my use case, the whole ensemble is not present, I only have a subset of the members. I have a metadata element telling me how many members there were at the time the ensemble was created, which I would like to encode.
If you want that to be the use case for this standard_name (for everyone), I think 'within a given ensemble' needs to explicitly say something like 'within its originally created ensemble'. And perhaps the standard name itself should follow that thought, something like 'initial_number_of_realizations'.
John
On Oct 30, 2014, at 01:40, Hedley, Mark <mark.hedley at metoffice.gov.uk> wrote:
> Thank you for the discussion on the number of realizations in an ensemble.
>
> Please may people raise any further concerns about a new standard name:
> number_of_realizations
> with a canonical unit of
> ''
> and a description of
> The number of member realizations within a given ensemble.
>
> This name enables a single member from an ensemble to explicitly be labelled, e.g.
> seven_of_nine
> which is often required in operational forecasting.
>
> I would like this to be added to the standard name list.
>
> thank you
> mark
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