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Note that the "conventions" being talked about here, which add agreed domain semantics to the netCDF syntax, are effectively an informal style of information model standardization. The effectiveness of netCDF as a vehicle for interoperability has depended on these, which enable interoperability within carefully scoped sub-communities within the fluid earth sciences. In the ISO/OGC context, these are referred to as "Application Schemas". Simon Cox
From: owner-galeon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-galeon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ben Domenico Sent: Wednesday, 25 July 2007 12:41 AM To: Tom Whittaker Cc: Unidata GALEON Subject: Re: weather station observation data in netCDF Hi all, Tom makes an excellent point. Even within our own community, it is crucial to establish and observe "conventions" for data encoding forms -- e.g. CF conventions for netCDF. Of course it is even more important when we are attempting to agree on international standard access protocols/interfaces. My hope for GALEON is to develop a mechanism whereby we can establish and evolve the conventions and protocol standards in tandem. For those of you who are not from the meteorology community: -- METAR is short for MEteorological Terminal Aerodrome Report, the WMO standard form in which surface weather station observations are transmitted -- RAOB is RAdiosonde (or sometimes RAwindsonde) OBservation, the output of a vertical upper air atmospheric sounding These are the fundamental, long-standing, in-situ observations of the meteorological community. There are thousands of METAR, and hundreds of RAOB, reporting stations around the globe. METAR stations produce reports several times per hour whereas RAOBs are launched only once or twice per day. The METAR reports especially are important in many of the OGC and GEOSS demo scenarios -- along with the weather forecast model output. And, as noted earlier, the METAR observations are very similar in nature to ocean buoy observations, river gaging station reports, air quality monitoring reports and many others. So for interdisciplinary research projects and operational scenarios where data from different sources must be integrated ( e.g. flood situtions or contaminant plume dispersion), it is absolutely essential that we establish a common set of conventions and protocols in order enable each community to access and understand the datasets from the other communities. My own personal desire is to minimize rather than proliferate the number of conventions and protocols needed to effect the useful exchange of data between communities of practice. -- Ben
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