Dear Roy

It's also fine to discuss things on the email list. GitHub is replacing trac
as the platform for proposals to change the convention.

> I totally disagree with this statement, which was similar to the one I 
> received a couple of years ago.  The way names should be defined should be 
> based on what makes the most sense and is most consistent with present 
> practice  (such as how are climatologies defined  - to me anomalies are the 
> flip side of climatologies), not present day convenience.  At the present 
> time it may be easier,  but in the long-run it is asking for problems.

We could indicate that it was an anomaly by using a different attribute from
the standard_name attribute. I agree that would work, but putting it in the
standard name works equally well. It is usual, in ordinary language, to say
that a quantity is "sea surface temperature anomaly", for example. Since there
are only a few use-cases, it seems to me that there is not a strong argument
for adding a new mechanism to the convention, which is a greater complexity.
If the situation changed, then we could think again. We don't try too much to
anticipate what could go wrong before there is evidence that it will go wrong,
or is already going wrong, in the development of the CF convention, in order
to keep it as simple as possible.

Best wishes

Jonathan
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