Dear Randy The usual choice would be the standard_name to refer to variation over an axis for which there is no netCDF dimension. "area" is provided as a special shorthand for the *combination* of horizontal axes. The advantage of it is that you don't have specify what these might be e.g. longitude and latitude, projection_x_coordinate and projection_y_coordinate. It's more obvious (I think) to the user of the data if you code "area: mean" than if you code "latitude: longitude: mean", for instance.
Cheers Jonathan > Your recommendation of changing the cell method name from the > standard_name to "area" is analogous to the recommendation you provided me > at the start of this message thread. > > In para 7.3.4 (Cell methods when there are no coordinates). the first > sentence is: > > "To provide an indication that a particular cell method is relevant to the > data without having to provide a precise description of the corresponding > cell, the "name" that appears in a "name: method" pair may be an > appropriate standard_name (which identifies the dimension) or the string, > "area" (rather than the name of a scalar coordinate variable or a dimension > with a coordinate variable)." > > Can you explain when standard_name serving as the name (rather than > "area") is appropriate ? _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
