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#108: Defining a domain for a cell_method
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  Reporter:  markh           |       Owner:  [email protected]
      Type:  enhancement     |      Status:  new                          
  Priority:  medium          |   Milestone:                               
 Component:  cf-conventions  |     Version:                               
Resolution:                  |    Keywords:                               
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Comment (by markh):

 Replying to [comment:1 jonathan]:

 > I feel this wording is not clear in its intention. For the usual case of
 a numerical coordinate, the domain over which the statistic is calculated
 is indicated by the cell bounds. Your intention is to provide the original
 coordinates, isn't it. That's a more detailed sort of information than the
 typical spacing.

 Absolutely, the aim of the ticket is is enable the data creator to provide
 this level of detail in a specified manner where they deem it useful, such
 as in my use case. Perhaps:

 __'''For complex domains, cell bounds and interval definitions may be
 unable to properly define the domain the method was applied over.'''
 To explicitly define the domain over which the statistic was calculated,
 the syntax (domain: varname varname) may be used. Each 'varname' is the
 name of an ancillary variable, referenced by the data variable. Each of
 the ancillary variables referenced contributes to the definition of the
 domain over which the cell_method operation was conducted.__


 > I continue to think that a more economical and therefore better approach
 would be to give the dimension name for the uncollapsed coordinate
 variable(s), rather than naming the variables themselves. They must all
 have that dimension if they are in the file, so I think this is robust for
 the CF convention, which is formulated for single netCDF files. I agree
 that programs that process files have to be careful about this kind of
 thing, but there are many other parts of the convention which are
 similarly fragile. I know you've commented on this already on the email
 list, but I didn't quite follow your argument there, sorry to say.

 The concern I have expressed with using the dimension name for the domain
 specification is that the named dimension is not used by the data
 variable, so any connection is fragile: that dimension is not in scope for
 the data variable.

 I wonder if there are potential problems with data integrity wrapped up
 with this kind of referencing.  It is different from the current
 ''name:dimension'' cell_method reference, as currently I can just check
 that ''dimension'' is a data variable dimension and I know I have the
 relevant information in scope.

 I can see that referencing the dimension name is a suitable way of
 delivering to the use case I have presented, and I do not pretend that
 referencing ancillary variables avoids all referencing problems.  I think
 it is a plausible solution.

 I prefer the slightly longer notation, where each ancillary variable is
 named within the domain string, and each named ancillary variable must be
 in scope for the data variable, I think this lends itself better to
 compliance checking and provides information more clearly to the data
 consumer.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://cf-pcmdi.llnl.gov/trac/ticket/108#comment:2>
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