I vote no.
As mentioned, using "flux" to refer to what is technically "flux
density" is commonplace and normal in many geoscience fields, and it's
clear by the lack of questions about it that this does not cause
problems for users.
Deprecating names and replacing them with an alias creates the
opportunity for confusion, and given the number and popularity of the
names that would be affected, I think this change would create a great
deal of confusion. A reasonable alternative solution
("integrated_flux") has been suggested for handling "proper" fluxes, and
as Karl says, we'd likely want to use that even if we did make the
change to avoid confusion with the old names.
So it seems to me that there's no real benefit to changing flux to
flux_density, and the potential for a very large downside.
Cheers,
--Seth McGinnis
On 5/19/15 3:23 PM, Jonathan Gregory wrote:
> Dear all
>
> Like Karl, I thought that many people would have opinions, but so far there
> are none. Please express your views! Shall we rename flux quantities in units
> of something per m2 to flux_density in all existing standard names? Here are
> the kinds of flux [density] we name:
>
> carbon energy evaporation graupel heat longwave mass melt mole momentum
> photon precipitation radiative rainfall refreezing runoff salt shortwave
> snowfall sublimation throughfall transpiration water_vapor water
>
> With regard to your point, Karl, I think we would not use plain "flux" in the
> area-integral sense. We would avoid using it altogether. We already have ways
> of working round it e.g. northward heat transport in W and there is no need
> to change those names.
>
> Best wishes and thanks
>
> Jonathan
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Karl Taylor <taylor13 at llnl.gov-----
>
> Date: Thu, 14 May 2015 10:47:55 -0700
> From: Karl Taylor <taylor13 at llnl.gov>
> To: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
> Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] flux
> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:31.0)
> Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.6.0
>
> Dear Jonathan,
>
> My oh my, this is bound to generate lots of opinions. I do recall
> the original discussion conclusion that although "flux density" was
> the proper name, we'd be lax in this case and go with common usage,
> "flux". An argument against the common usage is that if we want to
> define the flux density integrated over some surface, then we
> couldn't call it "flux", which is what it is. Perhaps to
> distinguish this from "flux" (W m-2), we would call this
> "integrated_flux" (W). Do we have examples of having to do this
> kind of thing in the current standard names?
>
> Even if we rename "flux" "flux density", we probably wouldn't want
> to refer to the integrated flux as simply "flux" because so many
> fields have already been written named "flux" when "flux density"
> was meant.
>
> It's not going to be easy.
>
> Karl
>
> On 5/14/15 9:37 AM, Jonathan Gregory wrote:
>> Dear all
>>
>> In connection with the radiative flux from the sun, the question has come up
>> of whether we should use the phrase flux_density for a flux per unit area in
>> all the standard names which currently have the word "flux". This would be
>> correct in physical terminology, but years ago we chose to use "flux" because
>> it's the normal terminology in many geosciences. There are more than 200
>> standard names of "flux" - radiative fluxes, mass fluxes and mole fluxes. In
>> some of them I don't think "flux density" is ever used e.g. I have never
>> heard of an "ocean flux density adjustment", and Google finds one hit for
>> "snowfall flux density". However we could rename them all and establish aliases
>> to the present names, if that would be an advantage for users of standard
>> names. Should this be done?
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Jonathan
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>
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Received on Tue May 19 2015 - 16:25:17 BST
