Dear CFers, What should the cell_methods of a non-coordinate variable (e.g., temperature) in a climatology?
We have climate model output archived as monthly means in each gridcell, so the cell_methods attribute of these monthly data begin as "time: mean" (i.e., monthly mean). We then create a climatology by a sequence of one or two more temporal-averaging steps. The one-step method puts all the months in the hopper and averages those. The two-step method first averages the months into four climatological seasons, and then averages those four seasons into the climatological annual mean. My understanding is that the resulting time coordinate cell_methods should be "time: mean within years time: mean over years" and that the time coordinate should supplant the time bounds attribute/variable with a climatology bounds attribute variable with appropriate endpoints. My question is what should be the cell_methods of the non-coordinate variables? I can think of five plausible answers: 1. "time: mean" (it's just a time-mean, after all) 2. "time: mean time: mean" (one-step climatology) 3. "time: mean time: mean time: mean" (two-step climo) 4. "time: mean within years time: mean over years" (same as time) 5. "time: mean time: mean within years time: mean over years" 6. ??? I favor 1 or 4 because 2, 3, and 5 seem redundant (though they do convey information about the arithmetic method). What is the CF-recommendation on this? Muchas gracias, Carlos -- Charlie Zender, Earth System Sci. & Computer Sci. University of California, Irvine 949-891-2429 )'( _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
