Hello Jonathan,
I still think the standard names for the stability indices are a bit of
a conundrum, but I do understand the desire to attempt to devise a
general sounding name for each product. I believe that most physical
quantities are general enough to easily fit into the CF standard naming
paradigm, i.e. attempt to phrase a name with general atmospheric terms
combined with ampersands into something that, as you described it, is
almost a description (vs. a name). To me, there are always some very
specific quantities (e.g. stability indices, NDVI, etc.) which are by
definition *not* general and are one-off ad-hoc quantities. I could see
a scenario where these types of products are their own special category
with the CF - and, thus, have unique, non-generalized, names - while the
large majority are more general and are easily adaptable to the CF
naming paradigm. My take is that you think that this type of product
delineation in the CF is not ideal in order to have cross-discipline use
and consistency for all the standard names, and thus are suggesting to
attempt to generalize each quantity if at all possible. This seems to
work in general but can cause issues with products like the stability
indices. The confusing aspect of this approach is that now some of the
stability index products will have general sounding names (e.g. the
proposed name for the lifted index) versus the total totals index which
is too complex to generalize. I'm not sure if this is really a problem
or not for the data users/modelers, but it is a little strange. Maybe it
is the only way to handle this somewhat unique situation. Bottom line,
I'm OK with your proposed names - the general one for the lifted index
and the specific one for the total totals index, but wanted to present
some of my thoughts as I've worked through this myself. Maybe you will
have some comments.
Re: the surface air, question. Yes, I forgot to reply to this question
in my last reply to you. The level of the "surface air' is not the
screen height in the GOES-R product but is from the NWP surface pressure
interpolated to the time of the GOES-R product and the horizontal
spatial grid. This information is not in the delivered product,
however. But, including the pressure level that the lifted index is
calculated could occur with a coordinate variable. It appears that the
proposed definition mentions a coordinate variable that would include
this level.
Sincerely,
Jonathan
On 5/21/2013 5:34 PM, Jonathan Gregory wrote:
Dear Jon
Thanks for considering my comments on this one
Standard Name:
temperature_difference_between_ambient_air_and_surface_air_lifted_adiabatically
I'm glad you're happy with a general name in this case. I am interested in
your response to Philip's question about how surface is defined here. It
might mean "surface air" in the sense of "screen height", I suppose. In the
standard name table, we do not actually have "surface air", because we expect
the actual screen height to be explicitly given as a height coordinate (1.5 m
or whatever). If that is the case, maybe this standard name should depend on
two vertical coordinates, and maybe it should be further generalised to
..._and_air_lifted_adiabatically. But that might be too general! What do
you think?
Best wishes
Jonathan
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