Dear Ken > Thanks for your response too (copied here? is it bad form in a listserv to > consolidate responses like this?)
I think it's convenient, myself! > That answer seems so easy and obvious that I wonder if I asked the question > properly! I'll have to ask Tim to be sure, but I think the standard > deviation is the standard deviation over time, of means generated in each > time-area-depth cell. > But I think the question still remains about being able to use a standard > name, which we would like to do of course? I am pretty sure in this example > for this standard deviation variable we should NOT use sea_water_temperature > for standard_name, and that it would be good if there were more standard name > modifiers to choose from. If there were, perhaps we could set standard name > to something like "sea_water_temperature standard_deviation". You *should* use sea_water_temperature as the standard_name. The standard_name alone is not to be regarded as the description of the metadata. It has to be taken in combination with cell_methods and modifiers. Maybe it seems more surprising that a temporal standard deviation of sea_water_temperature has sea_water_temperature for its standard name, but it's really the same kind of idea - i.e. a statistic - as a temporal mean or a temporal maximum, isn't it. Even if it was variance its standard_name would be sea_water_temperature, and in that case the units would be different too. Cheers Jonathan _______________________________________________ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
