Hi all, I am trying to find a consistent way to describe Time in CF-netCDF, so far without success. :(
The main reason is that there are only 3 standard names to describe Time (unless I missed something in the official CF standard name list): - time - forecast_reference_time - forecast_period I would like to describe properly (and without relying at all on the file names): - a forecast - several forecasts in the same file - an analysis - several analyses in the same file - a reforecast/hindcast - several reforecasts/hindcasts in the same file - observations - data assimilation/acquisition - distinguish if the data variable is associated with an analysis time or a forecast reference time (some data variables do differ between analysis and forecast step 0!) - etc. of course, I could use the generic "time" standard name and put all the required informations in the "long_name" attribute but I don't want to do that: long_name is a free text attribute, I need controlled vocabulary which is exactly the purpose of the standard_name attribute. I also need to be able to reference these "kinds" of time coordinates in the cell_method attribute of my data variables to describe statistical processing like sums/accumulations, min/max, means, standard deviations, etc. The simplest solution that comes to my mind would be to add new standard names for these kinds of time coordinates but it seems to be such a common issue that I can't believe nobody proposed before. Hence, I am wondering if I am missing something here or if someone tried and it was not very well received/rejected... Is it worth spending time drafting a proposal to define new standard names for time coordinates? cheers, ____________________________________ Dr. Sébastien Villaume M.A.R.S administrator DATA Governance facilitator ECMWF Shinfield Park, Reading RG2 9AX, UK +44 7825 521592 [email protected] ____________________________________ _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
