Dear Jonathan,
> OK. If experts are unanimous in their conviction that the existing names will
> never be needed for the meaning that they appear to have, I agree that they
> should become aliases of the new names, which convey the correct meaning.
> I'm sure this change could be made.
Great.
> Alison Pamment is in charge of the updates
> as you know and I expect she will consider as it soon as she has time. I think
> that a complete list of the new and old names would be useful - that may
> already be in one of your emails, perhaps.
I didn't include a full list yet. I will create one and send it around
the next days.
After reading one of the past mailing list posts again and talking to a
former colleague: it might be better to just include an "_in_" between
"X" and "dry_aerosol_particles" in the new names (and maybe remove
aerosol) instead of creating names like "...particulate_X_in_air". This
first version with "_in_" is better expandable, when particle size
fractions like PM10 should be considered in future (like
"..._X_in_PM10_dry_aerosol_particles_in_air").
Thank you very much.
Best,
Daniel
> Best wishes and thanks
>
> Jonathan
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Daniel Neumann <daniel.neumann at io-warnemuende.de> -----
>
>> Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2018 17:07:45 +0100
>> From: Daniel Neumann <daniel.neumann at io-warnemuende.de>
>> To: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
>> Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] Clarifying standard names for
>> 'mass_concentration_of_*_dry_aerosol_particles'
>> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101
>> Thunderbird/52.5.0
>>
>> Dear Jonathan,
>>
>>> I understand. That's tricky, [...]
>> Yes :-) .
>>
>>
>>> We could define apple to mean orange in
>>> future, for the sake of the existing datasets,
>>> but only if we are certain that no-one will
>>> ever want to talk about apples.
>> I am not aware of any situation in which someone actually meant to
>> talk about apples. Markus Fiebig from the World Data Centre for
>> Aerosols wrote the same
>> (http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/pipermail/cf-metadata/2017/059588.html).
>> I talked to two former colleagues, who confirmed it as well.
>> Therefore, it is quite save to assume that nobody talks about
>> apples.
>>
>>
>>> We could just define and start using the new names,
>>> and be aware that the CMIP5 datasets used the
>>> wrong names (because the CF process somehow
>>> made a mistake), without defining aliases. Would
>>> that be acceptable?
>> With respect to my personal usage of the respective standard names I
>> am fine with just defining new standard names. I also see that it is
>> the simplest solution for the moment considering the work effort
>> needed to additionally define aliases.
>>
>> But, we might run into trouble (and cause confusion), if both
>> standard names - apple and orange - are used to describe oranges.
>> People, who used "apple" in the past, probably keep using "apple" to
>> describe oranges because they are not aware of the changes. People
>> who look up standard names for their new data sets might also end up
>> with "apple" for describing an orange if "apple" is not marked as
>> deprecated. Also people comparing data sets following the old and
>> the new conventions (e.g. CMIP5 and CMIP6) might not be aware of
>> this discussion. Hence, I would prefer to define aliases.
>>
>> Would it be feasible with respect to the required work, to define
>> aliases for all the ambiguous standard names? How could I support
>> this process? There seem to be 100 to 110 standard names involved:
>>
>> ? - atmosphere_mass_content_of_X_dry_aerosol_particles (15)
>> ? - tendency_of_atmosphere_mass_content_of_X_dry_aerosol_particles*
>> (78, maybe less)
>> ? - mass_concentration_of_X_dry_aerosol_particles_in_air (15)
>> ? - tendency_of_mass_concentration_of_X_dry_aerosol_particles_in_air (1)
>>
>>
>> Best,
>> Daniel
>>
>>
>>
>> On 03.01.2018 14:40, Jonathan Gregory wrote:
>>> Dear Daniel
>>>
>>>>>> Is it feasible to rename all affected standard names?
>>>>> It would be feasible (using aliases) but is it necessary? It seems to me that
>>>>> your question has identified that there should be a distinction between e.g.
>>>>> mass_concentration_of_particulate_X_in_air
>>>>> and
>>>>> mass_concentration_of_X_dry_aerosol_particles_in_air
>>>>> for X=ammonium etc. These are different quantities: the former refers to the
>>>>> mass of ammonium only, the latter to the dry mass of the aerosol of that type.
>>>>> That is, we need new names for CMIP6, not aliases.
>>>> Yes, there should be a distinction between both standard names.
>>>> However, the latter name has been used as synonym for the first name
>>>> up till now (e.g. in CMIP5 or in a data set I published recently).
>>>> Additionally, the latter name has no real application - at least I
>>>> am not aware of an application (neither for model nor for
>>>> measurement data). Therefore, it might be reasonable for backward
>>>> compatibility to use aliases.
>>> I understand. That's tricky, because we've established that the second name
>>> is a valid concept but not correct. When we use aliases, it's because we've
>>> decided on a clearer, more consistent or more precise formulation of the
>>> name, but in this case, it seemed that we called something an apple when
>>> it ought to have been called an orange. We could define apple to mean orange
>>> in future, for the sake of the existing datasets, but only if we are certain
>>> that no-one will ever want to talk about apples.
>>>
>>> We could just define and start using the new names, and be aware that the
>>> CMIP5 datasets used the wrong names (because the CF process somehow made a
>>> mistake), without defining aliases. Would that be acceptable?
>>>
>>> Best wishes
>>>
>>> Jonathan
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> CF-metadata mailing list
>>> CF-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
>>> http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
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>> CF-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
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> ----- End forwarded message -----
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Received on Wed Jan 03 2018 - 14:46:55 GMT
