[CF-metadata] Missing data bins in histograms

From: martin.juckes at stfc.ac.uk <martin.juckes>
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2016 12:41:21 +0000

Hello,

the CF standard name list has two "histogram_.... " entries, and in the CMIP6 data request we may need to add a third, a histogram_of_cloud_top_height. Besides the standard name, we also need, for this new variable, a method of encoding the "missing data" bin in the histogram. That is, the histogram should record frequency in 16 data bins and one additional bin for the frequency of missing data.

Can we define a "missing_data_index" attribute for histogram variables, and use this to indicate that the first bin in the array has this special purpose. It might be more pythonic to put the _FillValue in the coordinate value for the missing data bin, but I suspect that this would cause substantial problems for many software packages.

regards,
Martin
Received on Tue Oct 11 2016 - 06:41:21 BST