Dear Jonathan,
On 2012-04-25 19:04, Jonathan Gregory wrote:
Dear Eizi and Heiko
I support your proposal to add "low_cloud_area_fraction",
"low_cloud_area_fraction", and "high_cloud_area_fraction".
(2) It's misunderstanding that whatever "cloud" located in high
layer becomes high cloud.
This sounds confusing to me, even though WMO may approve it. I would feel
uncomfortable about using this terminology in standard names. A user of
the data would very naturally assume "high cloud" means it is high, etc.
On the other hand, the cloud types Heiko mentioned (cumulus, altocumulus,
cirrus etc.) are used with consistent meanings, so these would be a reliable
basis for CF vocabulary.
I don't like the names low/medium/high neither. I would much more like
something like 'cirro', 'alto' and 'strato'_cloud_area_fraction, but
unfortunately, the latin translations had been used already (and the
translations aren't even correct, since the alto-* clouds are not the
high clouds).
Low/medium/high cloud types are well established terminology, e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud . Just because they are English
rather than Latin terms doesn't well mean that CF cannot use them?
Though this has been done very often, in my opinion, just translating an
ambiguous term like low into Latin doesn't make it less ambiguous.
Best regards,
Heiko
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