[CF-metadata] Standard names for anomaly-type parameters

[Philip Bentley]

Hi Jonathan,

Interesting to learn that this idea was raised previously. If it again
fails to receive any supporting voices then I guess it's a non-starter.
No problem: we'll go down the normal standard names route.

Regards,

Phil


> Dear Phil
> 
> >    Yet is it not the case that the physical property described by the
> >    'canonical' name and its associated 'anomaly' name is fundamentally
> >    the same? All that's changed is the use of a different reference datum
> >    (i.e. climatological mean instead of zero).
> >    So rather than create "_anomaly" variants of potentially hundreds of
> >    CF standard names, would an alternative solution be to add the term
> >    "anomaly" to the list of standard name modifiers (cf. Appendix C in CF
> >    spec)? In which case we'd be able to use names such as:
> >    "air_temperature anomaly"
> >    "lwe_precipitation_rate anomaly"
> >    "air_pressure_at_sea_level anomaly"
> >    and so on
> 
> Following an email thread started by Julian Hill, he and I also thought we
> would propose exactly this, and I mentioned the proposal at the GO-ESSP meeting
> in Paris last June. However it wasn't received enthusiastically. It is a bit
> different in concept from the other standard_name modifiers, which are
> generally intended for "fields of metadata" - standard errors and so on.
> The anomaly of a quantity is arguably more of a different quantity altogether;
> a time-interval, for instance, is a different thing from an absolute time.



> I agree that in principle any quantity *could* be an anomaly, but in practice
> are we *actually* going to need anomaly quantities for all of them (or a
> fraction of them which is nearer 100% than 10%, say)? As you say, very few have
> so far been needed. Perhaps we should decide on that kind of basis how to deal
> with it.
> 
> Other views would be helpful.
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> Jonathan
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