I have always had a problem with the ambiguity of units like ppm. An oxygen 
measurement in the atmosphere in ppm could have two different values, one in 
mass/mass and the other in  volume/volume. Consequently, the use of ppmv by 
some but my preference has always been to be semantically explicit with units 
such as microlitres/litre or mg/kg. Consequently, I was disappointed when ppm 
was added to UDUNITS. @JonathanGregory 's suggested change of words is an 
improvement in my view, but I would like to see it accompanied by a suggestion 
to use unambiguous, semantically implicit units.

To @dopplershift I would say that UDUNITS was incorporated into the initial CF 
standard because it was a part of the NetCDF community standard upon which the 
CF community standard was based.  Replacing UDUNITS by a units vocabulary under 
CF governance is something that has been discussed by the CF community several 
times - usually during discussions of the units to be used for salinity in 
oceanography - but it was and isn't a feasible proposition within available 
resources and so solutions such as "1e-3" and "1e-6" were written into the 
conventions.


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