# Presentation: 805306

## CF Standard NamesStatus andDevelopmentAlison Pamment        J.A.Pamment@rl.ac.uk

## Overview

- Current status of CF standard name table
- Process for agreeing standard names
- Development needs

## Current Status

- Currently 1039 names in table
- Represents approx 30% increase in size of table over 12 months
- A further 40 proposed names are agreed and ~30 are currently under discussion

## Standard Name Process (1)

- All proposals for new standard names must be made via the CF-Metadata mailing list
- There are published guidelines for the construction of standard names
- Proposals should include the unit and a definition

## Standard Name Process (2)

- Discussion of proposals takes place on the mailing list and all may participate
- The aim is to achieve** consensus**
- The standard names manager acts as moderator and keeps the discussion moving forwards

## Standard Name Process (3)

- Names for which consensus has been achieved are flagged as ‘accepted’ by the moderator
- Accepted names will go into the table at the next bimonthly update
- Accepted names can be used immediately – don’t have to  wait for table update to take place

## Standard Name Process (4)

- Where consensus cannot be reached by discussion the moderator will ask the standard names committee to vote on the proposed names
- The committee’s decision will be final
- All versions of the standard name table and guidelines will be kept online

## Development Needs – the problem

- Many standard name proposals are pretty straightforward...
- BUT
- A minority of name proposals are controversial and raise more questions than they answer
- FOR EXAMPLE:
- For new name proposals how much weight should be given to current usage in communities beyond CF?

## Development Needs – the problem

- Should we use human readable strings or opaque URIs that point to a definition?
- Should we put the definition in the file?
- Are standard names too long to be useful?
- We need a standard names ‘philosophy’

## Standard Name Philosophy

- Are the names aimed primarily at the proposing community or to be easily understood by the whole CF community?
- Human readable names certainly shouldn’t be misleading
- CF standard names can never be all things to all people

## Development Needs

- How do we express the relationship between CF standard names and external vocabularies?
- Currently we have GRIB and AMIP equivalences but they are out of date
- NDG vocabulary server
- Tickets 24 + 27 + 29 + ... : ‘common_concept’

## Common_concept

- The proposal is to allow a ‘bundling’ of CF metadata to include standard_name + other attributes, e.g, 2m temperature
- The ‘bundle’ could consist of a standard_name alone
- The bundle would have a scoped name and a URI that points to its definition
- Need a way of defining the constraints on a common_concept definition (#29)
- The URI could point to metadata not defined in CF (#27)

## Common_concept

- Registration of a common_concept would be quick (automated)
- Another user could register a different scoped name for an existing common_concept but the URI would be identical
- Common_concept would facilitate:
- The creation of short names
- Translation between standard_names and other vocabs

## Other Development Needs

- Instrument information – should it go in the standard name?
- Chemistry names (IUPAC?)
- Ticket 17: use cell_methods instead of ‘where’ names
- Ticket 33: ‘count over days’  for use with standard names for climate statistics

## Summary

- Agreed rules for standard names proposals will be published on CF website
- We need to develop a clear standard names ‘philosophy’
- The common_concept idea has received unanimous support in principle – there is much work to do on the practical implementation