Talk:CF Standard Names - Discussed Atmospheric Chemistry and Aerosol Terms

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I will be back in my office on June 1. --ChristianeTextor 16:51, 22 May 2006 (EDT)

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Thanks for your page. Perhaps you might like to post your comments to the CF email list. In that case I would post these responses:

• We have a general principle that we haven't defined standard names until they are actually needed, to avoid our spending too much time worrying about issues that can't be properly resolved until we know the context, and hence making more mistakes than necessary. Do you need all the names you have listed now? If so, that's fine of course.

• We have used "content" in a lot of standard names to mean the amount of something per unit area i.e. a vertical integral. Do you think e.g. "atmosphere ozone content" in kg m-2 isn't clear enough terminology?

• The difference between atmosphere and in_air is that atmosphere is used to refer to large-scale properties, and in_air to locally measured ones. Hence the distinction between e.g. mass concentration in air, and atmosphere content. Chemical concentrations would be in_air (as you have done), and hence distinguished from in_sea_water etc. If a given quantity could appear in places other than air, it is correct to be explicit.

• It doesn't matter to CF what units are used, so long as they are udunits. Any dimensionally equivalent unit can be used for a given standard name.

• However, kgC and kgS aren't SI units. I think the unit has to be kg. This implies that it's the standard name which must somehow indicate that it is the mass of C or mass of S which is being referred to, rather than the mass of the compound e.g. dry_deposition_flux_of_sulfur_as_sulfate_at_surface.

• You may indeed prefer mole_fraction for some quantities and mass_fraction for others. That would be your own decision for your project, but of course another project might make a different choice.

• equivalent_thickness_at_stp_of_atmosphere_ozone_content means the thickness (depth) of the layer you would get by collecting all the ozone in the atmospheric column at STP. It was named like that by analogy with the equivalent thickness (depth) of amounts of precipitation. Does that make sense?

• Names for variables and files would not be the subject of CF conventions

• We try to avoid abbreviations like "turdry" and "seddry". Although they make the names longer, I think these should be spelled out in full. Would this be a case for using due_to e.g. dry_deposition_..._due_to_turbulence?

• It could be unclear to have a distinction between "production" and "net production". Is there a more explicit name for the former? Can you call it "gross production", for instance, like gross/net primary productivity of ecosystems?

• Some of your species names are not IUPAC. Can you give a clear rule which can be consistently applied about when to allow non-IUPAC names? --JonathanGregory 16:51, 22 May 2006 (EDT)