Dear Jonathan, Thanks for these clarifications.
> > 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. > The cell_method of range was approved in ticket 65 > http://cf-trac.llnl.gov/trac/ticket/65 > and will be added in CF 1.7, which is under preparation. You could use this, > in combination with time bounds, to describe a diurnal range. To make sure that I understand: the standard name is "air_temperature", and for monthly mean the cell method is "time: range within days time: mean over days" But how about common continentality indices based on the annual range of monthly mean temperatures? Is there a "within months" such that the cell method for the basic element of the continentality index would be "time: mean within months time: range within years" ? Or is there another solution? > > 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? > The spell_length variables have canonical units of days. The number_of_days > variables have canonical units of 1, as you say. This is logical. Could you > use the standard name, including the phrase "number_of_days", to derive the > appropriate label? Yes, of course we could come up with something along those lines, or maybe add an attribute. I just thought there might be a widely used solution that I did not know of. Best wishes, Lars _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
