Dear Roy > I have concerns about having separate names for river, lake and sea. If you > have them for height, then the logic would extend to temperature. I have > temperature data from a boat that started in the North Sea, went up the > Humber and then up to the navigable limit of the Yorkshire Ouse. I would > much prefer a single Standard Name across the whole dataset.
I share that concern, but I didn't have a use-case where it would be a problem to have separate names, so thanks for that. > My suggestion of 'water body' as the generic term didn't get any reaction. > Was that acceptance or did nobody notice it? I noticed it, yes, thanks! It is a correct generic term, of course, but I feel it would cause a loss of clarity to replace "sea" with "water body" in existing standard names e.g. water_body_surface_height, water_body_water_temperature, water_body_water_speed and water_body_ice_thickness are all unfamiliar terms, whereas sea_surface_height, sea_water_temperature, sea_water_speed and sea_ice_thickness are all recognisable. In the particular case of Jeff's, "water body surface height" is not a term that Google finds, whereas "sea surface height", "lake surface height" and "river surface height" do all exist. More cumbersome than "water body", but clearer I think, would be to use the phrase "sea/lake/river" (I think "/" is a permitted character) e.g. sea/lake/river_surface_height, sea/lake/river_water_temperature. We could provide such names of this type as are requested, for generic uses like yours, but keep the "sea" names as well. In a case such as yours, would it be acceptable to use "sea" all the time, even when it's a river? Best wishes Jonathan _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata