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Hi Rich,<BR>
<BR>
>From my days in the oil exploration industry I seem to recall that the term "hydrostatic pressure" was used to describe pressure in a water column. Which might suggest the standard name "hydrostatic_pressure".<BR>
<BR>
A quick look at the definition of hydrostatic pressure on wikipedia indicates that this quantity includes the atmospheric pressure component too. So, while it may not be exactly what you're after, perhaps it's a term that might usefully be added to the standard name list?<BR>
<BR>
Phil<BR>
<BR>
On Sun, 2008-02-24 at 17:15 -0500, Rich Signell wrote:
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<FONT COLOR="#000000">CF folks,</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Don Murrya & I ran into a problem using the Integrated Data Viewer</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">(IDV) last week that suggested the need for a standard way to</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">determine whether a pressure variable is in water or the atmosphere.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">We currently have a "air_pressure" standard_name, but no</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">"ocean_pressure".</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">The IDV utilizes CF conventions, and when it sees pressure as a</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">vertical coordinate, it uses a standard atmosphere to convert to</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">height in meters for the purpose of visualization. This works fine</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">for atmospheric pressure, but when I tried to view my oceanographic</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">salinity and temperature profiles (which also have a vertical</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">coordinate of pressure), of course it failed to plot them below the</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">sea surface.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">I suggested to Don that the perhaps IDV could use the units of</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">pressure to determine atmosphere or ocean, since oceanographers nearly</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">always use decibars (one decibar being nearly equal to 1 meter of</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">water).</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">But a much better way would be to have a standard name that indicates</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">that we are measuring pressure below the sea surface. (0 pressure = 0</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">meters depth).</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Could just adding "ocean_pressure" as a standard name suffice?</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Thanks,</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Rich</FONT>
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