[CF-metadata] hydrosphere

[Jonathan Gregory]

Dear Roy

>  I have been using the term 'water column' in our vocabularies to identify
>  any body of salt or fresh water.  The term 'hydrosphere' has been used for
>  the same purpose elsewhere.
> 
>  I would welcome CF standard names embracing the concept of 'water column'
>  under any label as it would firm up the mappings between the BODC
>  vocabularies being used by SeaDataNet and CF (although it would weaken
>  mappings between CF and GCMD who clearly differentiate between salt and
>  fresh water). However, although using the word 'sea' for this concept
>  would overcome legacy issues I worry about the potential for confusion.

I'm replying on the email list as I think this is principally a matter of
naming rather than the subgrid convention.

Yes, I think "hydrosphere" would be a possible word to use when we need to
refer to properties of the whole mass of water, in the context where we
currently use "ocean" e.g. for large-scale transports. We also need a word
for the material, which we call sea_water, to refer to its properties such
as salinity, density, velocity and so on. Is there a word which means ocean,
sea, lake or river? In any language?

Cheers

Jonathan