Dear All, In a project we are trying to come up with CF compliant description of a range of climate indices (aka indices of climate extremes, ...), of which most I would believe fall under the heading "7.4 Climatological statistics". This is not a new topic for this email list; there was an extensive email exchange back in 2007 on "[CF-metadata] statistic indices", and related questions and requests have popped up both before and after. CF standard and the variety of climate indices has evolved quite a bit since 2007.
As this is an extensive and diverse topic, and I am a newcomer to this list , I will start with a couple of specific and possibly simple questions: 1. Is there a standard name for "diurnal temperature range", or a combined standard name/cell method representation? Cf. the 2010 mail archive thread http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/pipermail/cf-metadata/2010/054016.html that added "range" to Appendix E. 2. 'Heating Degree Days' and similar: I take it this was resolved/decided to have standard name "integral_of_air_temperature_deficit_wrt_time" (or ..._excess_...), with canonical units K s in this post http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/pipermail/cf-metadata/2005/051014.html . However, as the threshold is not explicitly referred to in the standard name, how is this linkage formally established? A practical example would be helpful. 3. Several of the standard names directly targeted at climate indices (e.g. "spell_length_.....", "number_of_days_...") are dimensionless because the unit is already included in the standard name. This is of course consistent and parsimonious in terms of describing the data. But with respect of a software package producing a plot that needs a legend with units attached, it is not very enlightening to have the unit "1". For example, in a map of Frost Days the title drawn from the long name or the comment may be something like "Number of Frost Days (Tmin < 0 degC)" but the color scale should preferably have units "days" rather than "1". As this is not specific to climate indices, what is the CF accepted advice or solution to this? 4. In Example 7.13 I believe the unit for monthly max daily precip should be "kg m-2" and not "kg"? Best regards, Lars -- Lars Bärring FDr,Forskare / Gästprofessor,CEC/Lunds universitet PhD,Senior Scientist / Guest professor,CEC/Lund University SMHI / Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute Rossby Centre SE - 601 76 NORRKÖPING http://www.smhi.se E-post / Email: [email protected] Tel / Phone: +46 (0)11 495 8604 Fax: +46 (0)11 495 8001 Besöksadress / Visiting address: Folkborgsvägen 17 _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
