Hi John,

I think if you look at the various molar primary productivity standard names 
you'll see that the decision has been made in the past to define 'productivity' 
as 'production per unit area'.  It might be less confusing if you used

net_primary_production_of_carbon_per_unit_volume

It might also be helpful to constrain this new standard name to the marine 
environment as production per unit volume doesn't fit the terrestrial domain as 
well as production per unit area - say something like:

net_primary_production_of_carbon_per_unit_volume_of_sea_water

Cheers, Roy.

Please note that I now work part-time from Tuesday to Thursday.  E-mail 
response on other days is possible but not guaranteed!

-----Original Message-----
From: CF-metadata [mailto:cf-metadata-boun...@cgd.ucar.edu] On Behalf Of John 
Graybeal
Sent: 05 June 2013 03:07
To: CF Metadata List
Subject: [CF-metadata] new standard name for primary productivity of carbon per 
unit volume

I would like to request a CF standard name.

Name: net_primary_productivity_of_carbon_per_unit_volume
Units: kg m-3 s-1
Definition: Net primary productivity is the excess of gross_primary_producivity 
(rate of synthesis of biomass per unit volume from inorganic precursors by 
autotrophs, or "producers", especially by photosynthesising plants using 
sunlight for energy) over the rate at which they themselves respire some of 
this biomass (plant_respiration, assuming all producers to be plants). 
"Productivity of carbon" refers to the production of biomass expressed as the 
mass of carbon which it contains.

There is an existing net_primary_productivity_of_carbon, expressed per unit 
area. As we are making a data set available which is integrated over a vertical 
extent, producing values with units to match (i.e., kg m-3 s-1), a new standard 
name is needed.

Note: It appears the definition of net primary productivity may assume the 
value will be measured as per unit area. This probably needs to be corrected.

John





------------------------------------
John Graybeal
Senior Data Manager, Metadata and Semantics

T +1 (408) 675-5545
F +1 (408) 616-1626
skype: graybealski

Marinexplore
920 Stewart Drive
Sunnyvale, CA



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