I think we should be careful with this. There is a big (order of magnitude) difference between 'mole' and 'molecule'.
I am rather new to this mailing list, so I am not sure what the impact of this difference between mole and molecules would mean in terms of naming the variables. In the atmospheric community the standard is indeed to use 'molecules / cm^2' and not 'mole / cm^2', so IMO using the term 'mole' in the standard name would be quite confusing. In any case I am also quite interested to know what the proper standard names for these quantities should be. Also note that udunits does not support 'molecules'. In one of our projects we are currently using the following custom udunits definition to support this: <unit> <def>mol/6.02214179e23</def> <name> <singular>molecule</singular> <plural>molecules</plural> </name> <aliases> <name><singular>molec</singular></name> </aliases> </unit> Best regards, Sander On 20 dec. 2012, at 16:41, Andreas Hilboll <li...@hilboll.de> wrote: > Hi all, > > following the suggestion from Philip, I hereby propose the addition of > the following standard names. All are commonly used quantities used in > satellite remote sensing of atmospheric trace gases, and all are > commonly used in units of "molecules / cm^2": > > - stratosphere_mole_content_of_nitrogen_dioxide > - troposphere_mole_content_of_nitrogen_dioxide > - troposphere_mole_content_of_glyoxal > - troposphere_mole_content_of_formaldehyde > - troposphere_mole_content_of_iodine_monoxide > - troposphere_mole_content_of_bromine_monoxide > - troposphere_mole_content_of_sulfur_dioxide > - troposphere_mole_content_of_ozone > > The respective definitions could be something along the lines of > (borrowing from Christophe's ozone proposal): > > "Content" indicates a quantity per unit area. The > "troposphere/stratosphere content" > of a quantity refers to the vertical integral from the surface to the > tropopause / from the tropopause to the stratopause. For the content > between specified levels in the > atmosphere, standard names including content_of_atmosphere_layer are > used. The construction "atmosphere_mole_content_of_X" means the > vertically integrated number of moles of X above a unit area. The > chemical formula for nitrogen_dioxide / glyoxal / formaldehyde / > iodine_monoxide / bromine_monoxide / suflur_dioxide / ozone is NO2 / > CHOCHO / HCHO / IO / BrO / SO2 / O3. The IUPAC name for glyoxal / > formaldehyde / ozone is ethanedial / methanal / trioxygen. > > Cheers, > Andreas. > _______________________________________________ > CF-metadata mailing list > CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu > http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata