Dear John I prefer the idea that Thomas has put forward of an umbrella, rather than containing the vector/tensor components in one data variable, because
* I really don't like the idea of units being mixed within a data variable. I think things with different units must certainly be different quantities and could not be regarded as the same field. You can get away with it if they are all m s-1, for instance, but not so easily if the vertical one is orders of magnitude different from the horizontal, and not at all if the vector is expressed in polar coordinates. * I think it would be very inconvenient, and would break a lot of existing software, if the coordinates were not what they appeared to be, because an offset had to be added. Also, in general, the component fields of a staggered grid do not have the same dimensions, as well as differing in the coordinates. * It avoids the need to define a convention for labelling vector/tensor components. * It is completely backwards-compatible as regards the component fields, which are exactly as before; we're just adding some separate information linking them. This seems neat to me. Best wishes Jonathan _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
