Dear CF group:
Thank you for your time in discussing this matter.
I would counsel you *not* to make wholesale changes to existing names just
because IOOS needs names for water levels that may or may not be measured in
the ocean! Replacing 'sea_' with something else seems like it would break much
existing code. Adding some names should be mostly harmless.
For the specific case of water-level measurement devices, I think the term
water_level_* is better, applied generically regardless of oceanic, lacustrine
or riverine environment, for the following reasons.
* There is no other generic name, and inventing one like SLR or sea+lake+river seems contrived.
* Every use of sea_level I can find in the CF name list refers to sea level as a
semi-constant reference point rather than as an instantaneous measurement. Indeed, a
comment used repeatedly in the CF table is that "sea_level means mean sea level,
which is close to the geoid in sea areas." Therefore, separate names for
sea_level_*, lake_level_ and river_level_* do not seem appropriate.
* Yes, there is water in the atmosphere and underground. CF already seems to
qualify those uses with terms like 'atmosphere', 'cloud' and 'in air.'
Therefore, it does not seem necessary to qualify 'water' as being on the
surface--simply retain the existing non-surface qualifiers. If you later need a
name to refer to the level of water in an underground aquifer or something,
then create one.
Regarding the Use Case of measuring temperature in the sea and then continuing
the trajectory upriver: there currently do not exist water_temperature names
other than sea_water_temperature, so the Use Case is not satisfied at present.
Perhaps in future CF could define additional generic names like
water_temperature that may have specializations such as sea_water_temperature
and fresh_water_temperature, but this can be done later and independently of
the existing actual use case of water level measurements.
Cheers,
Jeff DLB
--
Jeff de La Beaujardière, PhD
Senior Systems Architect, Data Integration Framework
Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) Program Office
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
1100 Wayne Ave #1225, Silver Spring MD 20910 USA
+1 301 427 2427
jeff.delabeaujardi...@noaa.gov
_______________________________________________
CF-metadata mailing list
CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu
http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
