It seems to me that we would need four standard_names to satisfy
everyone's needs. How does this sound?
platform_name: variable of character type containing a character ID or
name of an observing station or other platform
platform_id: variable of integer type, identifying an observing station
or other platform
platform_naming_authority: variable of character type, specifying the
naming authority or system used to choose a platform_id or platform_name
platform_description: variable of character_type which describes an
observing station or other platform
A typical station would have a platform_name or platform_id, but rarely
both. The reason for having both is that I expect that the numerical
WMO identifiers (of various lengths) will be used very frequently, and
it can be helpful to represent numbers as numbers. But Eiji's message
shows that we must allow for character identifiers. A relatively short
character identifier would have a different function from the kind of
long description suggested by Øystein. The most common
platform_naming_authority would be the originally conceived "WMO", of
course.
- Jeff
On 8/26/11 12:36 AM, Øystein Godøy wrote:
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:26:55 -0700
From: "Jeffrey F. Painter"<[email protected]>
Subject: [CF-metadata] standard names for stations
To: cf-metadata<[email protected]>
Message-ID:<[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
The draft version 1.6 of the CF Conventions manual recommends use of
two
standard names which don't exist yet but are needed to describe discrete
data such as observations from stations or other discrete points. So
I'd like to propose the following two standard names:
- station_description : variable of character type containing a
description of a time series station
- wmo_platform_id : variable of integer type, containing the WMO
identifier of an observing station or other platform
- Jeff Painter
Hi,
I clearly see the need for this.
Concerning station_description, I think this is useful whether it is a time
series or not. There is a need to describe the actual location for the
station. E.g. describe the surface, horizon, and other aspects that may affect
the observations.
Concerning wmo_platform_id, I think Nan Galbraiths suggestion using an id
and a naming authority is useful and more flexible than specifying a WMO
reference directly. Concerning my institution, all stations operated by us,
whether being WMO stations or not, always have an internal ID. Not all
stations have a WMO id. It may even be useful to be able to use multiple ids
for stations to cover situations like the one I mention.
NACCD is good but it does not have the momentum that CF has. Many other
such discovery conventions for NetCDF files exist and are used, most of
course differing only slightly. I believe they will merge in time, but for now
I think NACDD is less used than CF. I certainly agree it should be promoted
(and we will probably move towards it), but these things take time.
Thus I would prefer put as much information as possible as CF-compliant
variables in the dataset, even if it means duplicating them as global
attributes for discovery purposes.
All the best
Øystein
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