Dear Nan, John, Jeff I think variable attributes are generally better than global attributes, because it's possible or indeed likely that you might have data from different sources in the same file. I prefer data variables to describe themselves. We can provide global attributes as a default for the whole file, but it seems safer to me to repeat the attributes per variable.
Following John's point, I agree that this station ID information will not be usable by machine or guaranteed to be unique unless we standardise it in some way. I don't know about this subject, but I am sure there are people who are well-informed about it! If we want the station ID attribute(s) to be machine- readable, we can propose a standard format for them. If we want an attr where the data-writer can informally record ID information that another human could interpret, we don't need a standard format. Which do we want - any views? Best wishes Jonathan _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
