Dear CF-Mailinglist,
in a recent proposal (link given below*), Alison and I discussed about
the naming conventions for the mass of specific aerosol particle
components. There seems to be clarification necessary in the
descriptions and/or names.
[* recent proposal with discussion:
http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/pipermail/cf-metadata/2017/059522.html, look
for "10. mass_concentration_of_chloride_dry_aerosol_particles_in_air (kg
m-3)"]
Currently, there exist standard names like
> mass_concentration_of_ammonium_dry_aerosol_particles_in_air
> mass_concentration_of_dust_dry_aerosol_particles_in_air
> general form: mass_concentration_of_X_dry_aerosol_particles_in_air
which describe mass concentration of aerosol particles that contain
species X. Thus, this standard name describes not only the mass of
species X but also the mass of other species that are associated with X
on particles. In the past, I thought it would describe the mass of
species X only. We think that there is a need for clarifying this in the
description of these standard names.
When we now want to quantify the mass of particulate X only (e.g. mass
of particulate chloride, mass of particulate ammonium), we could use the
standard name
> mass_concentration_of_dry_aerosol_particles_expressed_as_X_in_air
However, I see two problems with respect to this naming convention.
First, we get a not-nice name if we want to express the mass
concentrations of particulate ammonium in terms of nitrogen. We needed a
standard name like
>
mass_concentration_of_dry_aerosol_particles_expressed_as_ammonium_expressed_as_nitrogen_in_air
which contains 'expressed' twice.
Second (but that is my personal feeling only), I use the
"X_expressed_as_Y" formulation only, when there is some relation from Y
to X. Or in other words: when Y is a reasonable measure for X.
> ...organic_matter_..._expressed_as_carbon...
> ...nox_expressed_as_nitrogen...
> ...phytoplankton_expressed_as_phosphorus...
Therefore,
"mass_concentration_of_dry_aerosol_particles_expressed_as_X_in_air" is
not a good choice for a standard name describing the mass of particulate
X in my opinion.
An alternative would be to introduce a standard name like
> mass_concentrations_of_particulate_X_in_air
> mass_concentrations_of_particulate_ammonium_in_air
> mass_concentrations_of_particulate_chloride_in_air
What is your opinion on this topic?
Best Regards,
Daniel
--
Daniel Neumann
Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemuende
Physical Oceanography and Instrumentation
Seestrasse 15
18119 Rostock
Germany
phone: +49-381-5197-287
fax: +49-381-5197-114 or 440
e-mail: daniel.neumann at io-warnemuende.de
Received on Tue Jun 27 2017 - 06:43:58 BST
