Talk:Air Quality/Chemistry Naming Conventions

From Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)

What links here: Air Quality/Chemistry Naming Conventions

General discussion on Air Quality/Chemistry Naming Conventions. If needed, parctice editing in the Sandbox
  • To add to the discussion, log in to DataFed wiki
  • Begin each entry with ====Username: Subject====
  • To respond, add dots ====......Username: Subject====
  • Indent response text by adding : for each tab.
  • Sign your entry by ending with '~~~~',








I am in charge to organise the definition of new names for the CF convention, both as an outcome of our Ispra HTAP meeting as well as by the EU-project GEMS. Do you have any information on what the status of naming conventions for aerosol&chemicals is? I have recently sent an email to Jonathan Gregory and Bryan Lawrence (see below), but did receive a reponse yet. ChristianeTextor 19:26, 10 May 2006 (EDT)


Thank you for your note on CF naming extensions. Your work will be a very important part of developing interoperability among projects, programs, agencies and countries. Given the formal consensus-based procedures and the broad acceptance of the CF conventions in the met/ocean communities, it is a very attractive model for creating an Air Chemistry extension to the existing Standard Names.
In order to collect the information on this topic, we have set up this wiki page. It lists the standard air chemistry names in the CF convention (as of April 7, 2006). It is evident that the current list is very limited and it clearly requires expansion to accommodate the needs of this HTAP/GEMS project as well as the needs for other air quality/chemistry-related names.
I do not have a direct interaction with the CF naming custodians, however I gather from the website that there is a particular e-mail address where naming requests are submitted. The wiki page on air quality/chemistry naming also contains links three additional standard name collections:
  • EPA Air Quality System (AQS)
  • Supersite Project Naming Standards
  • PRISM Project Naming Standards
I hope that this information will be of use. Clearly this is a major and thankless undertaking since it is so hard to do it "right" for every one's satisfaction. In order to distribute labor we have set up the above wiki pages where interested work group participants can enter links as well as descriptions through the open wiki process. If you would prefer to maintain such an interactive web page as part of your GEMS project we would be more than happy to make our contributions to those pages. Rhusar 19:30, 10 May 2006 (EDT)

I think your idea with the wiki pages is great! For exchanging and establishing ideas on standards and tools for the intercomparison work in an interactive way. Thanks a lot for pointing us to this.
At this point, in the beginning, it would be really important to choose a representative entry point. Which has some longer life time. which es even not linked too much to an infividual organisation. Otherwise a discussion on standards makes no sense. I think also GEMS is not the right thing, since it is a project and by definition will end in some years.
So I have some questions ( also to the colleagues):
1. Is ESIP the right federation to keep this? (I have not heard of it before)Isnt that purely american?
2. Wouldn't it be better to have for example an IGAC administrated wiki page? I must admit that I find it nice to just start and may be we can copy everything to another place once we found it.
3. Who will be the administrator and can create new pages for example in your initial set-up?
4. Who can change to general outline of these pages? I think there is always too much meta communication on how to edit and who has edited and when etc on these wiki pages.
5. Is there and administrator at ESIP who would react within a day or two if we had small wishes? Michael Schulz (MichaelSchulz) 13:21, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

1. Location of the Workspace. I am in full agreement with all the key items you raised. Picking an agencey/nationally neutral work-space is vital for the 'political corecteness' of these efforts, like HTAP.
2. Longevity of the Workspace. Having a workspace for interoperability discussions and content management that has longevity beyond typical project lifetimes is indeed highly desireable.

Response

I agree that a discussion on the guidelines for chemistry and aerosol names is needed in order to satisfy the needs of as many people as possible. And this is a good start!

A wiki page for this discussion would be very useful, but we should agree on only one page of the two I am aware of: 1)http://home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence/cf from Bryan Lawrence, or the 2)Talk:Air_Quality/Chemistry_Naming_Conventions Rudulf Husar has set up this wiki page "Air Quality/Chemistry Naming Conventions".

As a first step I will now go through the material I gathered, write up a proposal for a list of new names, which can serve as a basis for these discussions, and send it to the wiki page we agreed on. ChristianeTextor 16:05, 15 May 2006 (EDT)


Thanks for bringing us up to date on the on the CF naming for Air Chemistry topic. A few comments and a suggestion.
  • It appears that the wiki is an agreeable tool to conduct much of the communication, cooperation and coordination for this work group
  • However, as Michael Schulz properly notes, such a work-space (1) should be at a 'neutral' web-space and (2) have assurance for longevity.
  • We are not in position commit to the long-term physical maintenance of the wiki site. Also, we are definitely not equipped to be managers/editors of a wiki contents.
Nevertheless, our view is that progress along the naming conventions is a necessary step toward broader interoperability, the same way as netCDF is for binary data encoding, an OGC Web Coverage Sevice(WCS) is for universal data queries. Within our own small group, we have 4-5 projects and collaborative activities that could benefit from these CF naming extensions. I am sure that most of us could use these conventions well beyond the current HTAP applications.
  • So, we would like to help bootstrapping this effort primarily through our accumulated tools/methods and experience in wiki-aided collaboration.
  • One possibility is to start with an experimental wiki site, and then transferring the contents to the neutral long-term site ASAP.
  • With the web-based wiki, 'managing' the contents (whatever that means for a wiki) could be transferred immediately to your group.
I am sure there are many viable alternative paths to pursue this, so please consider the above simply as a friendly offer for pooling resources an collaboration. Rhusar 16:08, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

PCMDI are in the process of configuring a new set of CF web pages including discussion fora (and possibly task tracking software) ... so in the very near future we expect the management of CF name changes etc to be more than just this mailing list. (Folks will recall that both PCMDI and BADC are contributing effort to try and get CF rolling forward without elying on the contributions of the original authors).
Hopefully Kyle is reading the list, and can give us an eta for wider use of the prototype he's got going at the moment. I think realistically though, Alison (based in the UK) and Kyle (based on the west coast of the US) will need to have a face-to-face chat about how to manage ongoing CF modifications before we get things working really well, and that's planned for mid-June.
If in the mean-time groups want to use wikis to get ideas sorted, then excellent. BryanLawrence 16:09, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

This is a good initiative and I believe the wiki platform might be a suitable way of collecting the relevant information and opinions. I agree with Rudolf that it is of paramount importance to establish such forum on a "neutral" site and unsure its longelivity. Could it be that WMO would be a good place to deal with this? At a recent meeting Len Barrie mentioned that he is always looking for "plums that are ripe to pick", meaning that he would like to see WMO assume this kind of facilitiating role, trying to set standards etc. Of course, a potential downside of this may be that an excessive bureaucracy could get involved and make life harder for everyone. Therefore, I would suggest a two-fold strategy: (1) tentatively approach WMO (through Len) whether this kind of initiative could be hosted and maintained there in principle, (2) continue the more informal discussions and soliciting of comments on one of the existing wiki pages for the shorter-term period (i.e. the next year or so).
It will also be important to raise the awareness and interest in the modelling community. A good starting point for this could be an IGAC newsletter article quite soon, and an EOS and Eggs article in a few months time. Martin Schultz (MartinSchultz) 16:12, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

For your information, please find attached a report from a small workshop held in Ispra in March on cooperation among tracer intercomparisons. (sorry for double posting)
Please note:
1) that indeed participants agreed to make an IGAC article from that workshop, with the idea to announce standards. And I volunteered to put a small article together. I asked already IGAC and the next possibility is some issue in mid/late autumn. If you wish to contribute to the writing please drop me a short notice.
2) that Christiane Textor volunteered to follow-up (if not co-ordinate a first suggestion) the CF naming requirements for aerosol species and reactive gaseous components. We had the feeling that this should happen in this spring to help in some upcoming intercomparison activities, such as HTAP and AeroCom II.
3) Hosting/coordinating the CF info and wiki discussion at PCMDI (of course) or WMO would be ecellent. It would be nice if some working web solution would be settled soon. Meanwhile I think Rudolfs wiki is a very good place to get it going for the aerosols and reactive components. Maybe there is more out there, then what we are aware of. MichaelShulz 16:15, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

Indeed, the new CF website prototype is up and running at this URL: http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cf
It only contains a subset of the content in the current website, but it should provide a good opportunity to give feedback about the direction we're heading.
In particular, I'd encourage you to look at the message board system (which would replace the cf-metadata mailing list) and the standard names table:
The website allows members to actively contribute using a Wiki-like content management system. If you're interested in obtaining a username and password to try out the message board and page-editing features, please let me know, and I'll create an account for you.
Another feature that you may find to be quite useful is the "live search" capability. If you type some text into the search box in the upper-right corner (try "air pressure", for example) and wait for a few seconds, several search results should pop up beneath the box. This could be a powerful way to search standard names.
We don't yet have an ETA for officially switching to the new website, but your feedback, especially in the early stages, is very valuable! 128.252.167.79 16:19, 15 May 2006 (EDT)