Re: [CF-metadata] Recording "day of year on which something happens"

[Jon Blower]

Thanks Jim, that’s very helpful. Is cell_methods necessary in this case (for the time axis bounds) – probably not since this isn’t a statistical quantity like an average, but a value that’s “representative” of the year.   I seem to remember from a while back that there was a proposal to allow time axes to use “calendar years since X” (as opposed to “years since X”, which uses a fixed-length UDUNITS year), which might handle this use case. I have been out of the loop for a while, but I can’t find mention of that in the CF spec, so maybe that didn’t go through.   I might consider requesting a new standard name – “days” is good, but I wonder if a more specific one would be helpful.   Best wishes, Jon     From: CF-metadata <cf-metadata-boun...@cgd.ucar.edu> on behalf of Jim Biard <jbi...@cicsnc.org> Date: Tuesday, 14 March 2017 15:12 To: "cf-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu" <cf-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu> Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] Recording "day of year on which something happens"   Jon, 1) I'd use 'days'. It is a valid standard name apart from the 'days since date' formalism. It's not perfect, but it's legal. You could, alternatively, request a new standard name. 2) Use a time_bounds variable. I would tend to set the time to be July 1 at midnight for each year, and set the bounds for each year to Jan 1 of that year and Jan 1 of the next year. Grace and peace, Jim On 3/14/17 10:43 AM, Jon Blower wrote: Hi all,   We need to structure a NetCDF file that will hold a variable that represents the day of the year on which an event happened (integers from 0 to 366). This value is recorded every year for a number of years. I have a couple of questions about how best to do this:   1. What is the best standard name to use for the day of the year? I didn’t find anything in the standard name table, although I might have missed it.   2. What would be the best way to define the time axis? Each point along the axis would represent a whole year, rather than an instant in time. I could simply pick an arbitrary instant (e.g. midnight on 1st Jan) to represent the year, but is there a better way?   Thanks in advance for any help!   Jon   _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata   -- Visit us on Facebook Jim Biard Research Scholar Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites NC North Carolina State University NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information formerly NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center 151 Patton Ave, Asheville, NC 28801 e: jbi...@cicsnc.org o: +1 828 271 4900 Connect with us on Facebook for climate and ocean and geophysics information, and follow us on Twitter at @NOAANCEIclimate and @NOAANCEIocngeo.

_______________________________________________
CF-metadata mailing list
CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu
http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata