CSN Quantity Templates
From CSDMS
CSDMS Standard Names — Quantity Templates
- The "templates" listed here are not exhaustive, but they do address many commonly needed cases where the pattern may not be obvious. Additional templates can be created from any of the "base quantities" listed in the text file "CSDMS_Standard_Name_Quantities.txt".
- Each template includes examples and explanatory notes, and many of them make reference to the CF Standard Names, sometimes using the abbreviation "CF".
- "Quantity" seems the best word choice here; see its Wikipedia page. The word "attribute" is a more general and may also be a good choice, but many attributes cannot be measured or quantified with a numerical value that has units. We could potentially use a "has units" metadata flag to indicate when an attribute is a quantity. A partial list of base quantities is given in the text file: "CSDMS_Standard_Name_Quantities.txt".
- A quantity suffix is a quantity name like "anomaly", "component", "increment" or "magnitude" that produces a new quantity name from an existing base quantity name. Note that an "increment" can be associated with any quantity to create an new quantity.
- For quantities that require 2 objects/substances to be specified, such as "partial_pressure", "solubility" and "volume_fraction" we reserve the word "_in_" and use the pattern: object = object + "_in_" + object
carbon_dioxide_in_air_partial_pressure carbon_dioxide_in_water_solubility clay_in_soil_volume_fraction sand_in_soil_volume_fraction silt_in_soil_volume_fraction
- There are several terms that may provide a "short name" or synonym for another quantity, such as:
aspect = surface_gradient_direction discharge = volumetric_flow_rate slope = surface_gradient_magnitude speed = velocity_magnitude (or even "motion_rate")
- We may need a provision to indicate whether a vector quantity associated with a model grid cell is "incoming" or "outgoing". These adjectives are used in many CF Standard Names, but not with respect to a model cell. We may be able to use a "quantity_suffix" for these cases. While we could use modifiers like "from_cell", "into_cell" and "in_cell", it seems that we should avoid standard names that refer to a model cell in this way.
