Thank you for replying and the pointers on the right path. I can indeed get compliance by avoiding the specification of a standard name. It's a bit of a pain because my plotting software (iris) will label the dimension by standard name, and then long name if standard name is unavailable. It simply means that I have to keep the long name relatively short for usability of the file - but I can live with that.
Cheers, Neill -----Original Message----- From: CF-metadata [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nan Galbraith Sent: 01 November 2017 14:08 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] Observation number I'd just like to elaborate one (potentially obvious) point: if there is no appropriate standard name for the variable in the CF vocabulary, don't use the standard_name attribute, just give the variable a descriptive long name, using the long_name attribute. Cheers - Nan On 10/31/17 9:00 AM, Jim Biard wrote: > > Neill, > > Lack of a standard name doesn't make the file non-compliant. There's > no minimum set of required attributes. If you follow the conventions > in how you make your observation number coordinate variable, then you > are fine, even if there is no standard name for it. > > Grace and peace, > > Jim > > > On 10/31/17 7:36 AM, Bowler, Neill wrote: >> >> Hi all, >> >> I'm very new to this, so please forgive my ignorance. >> >> I'm working on GPSRO data, and once this data has been collated we >> write it to a netCDF file. The main observation data is written as a >> 2D array with dimensions observation number (1 to n, where n will >> vary from file to file) and height (from 0 to 60km). The file also >> contains lots of additional data (such as latitude and longitude of >> each observation, the ID of the satellite used, etc). The integer >> observation number is the only sensible unique dimension that I know of. >> >> My difficulty is that observation number, or something similar, is >> not in the CF standard. Therefore my files are not CF-compliant, >> although they are in every other respect. Is there scope for adding >> something like observation number to the standard? >> >> Many thanks, >> >> Neill >> >> -- ******************************************************* * Nan Galbraith Information Systems Specialist * * Upper Ocean Processes Group Mail Stop 29 * * Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution * * Woods Hole, MA 02543 (508) 289-2444 * ******************************************************* _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
