Dear John, Roy, Steve et al. I don't think there is a problem with having more than one variable in a file with the standard_name of time (or any other standard_name), but I expect that you'd want some other metadata to discriminate among them, as Roy said. I also see no problem with having other kinds of "time" standard name, though. We already have forecast_reference_time. I suggested a definition of plain "time" as being the temporal coordinate (or the best estimate of it - any measured coordinate has some uncertainty of course) of the geophysical data. The raw time that came out of some clock which might require correction could have some other standard name to discriminate it from this best estimate, if that were useful, I think.
I don't think we have a thorough answer to the issue of instrumental and raw data, though. As with everything else, we have addressed it as and when it has come up, and consequently we already have some names that relate to measure- ments and how they are made, whereas the stdname table started out with only geophysical quantities named in it - things which claim to be properties of the world, rather than things which are part of the measurement process. Since we are only addressing it piecemeal, we might be making a mess of it, but I certainly don't know enough about this to comment. As Steve said wisely, you can only standardize the things that you understand thoroughly! Best wishes Jonathan _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
