External Standards

Some of the External Standards identified for this exercise. (All of these references have been incorporated into the MMI project's web site. Please use the left hand navigation bar to find current reference pages.)

Standard Naming Exercise

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Conventions, etc.:

This page includes information or links to information about different external standards, conventions, and lists related to variable names.

What do we need to know about each? (Please add to this list of topics.)

  • Core variables that are included (and what they're called)?

  • Operational status? (The more used they are, the more mature they are?)

  • Are they based on a data file format (e.g., netCDF, COARDS, EPIC, etc. or a glossary, thesaurus, or other file-independent standard?

Some of this material has been cited also in specific reference pages on this site:

The Reference List

  • Global Change Master Directory's (GCMD) keywords http://gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov/Resources/valids - hierarchical list of keywords to the variable level (groupings: science, services, projects, instruments, platforms, locations)
  • British Oceanographic Data Centre's (BODC) parameters http://ioc.unesco.org/oceanteacher/resourcekit/M3/ocean_primer.htm - hierarchical list of parameters by code. BODC also has a list of parameter units.
  • U.S. Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) Dictionary of Parameters http://usjgofs.whoi.edu/datasys/param_master.html - list of parameter names, descriptions, and units according to the following categories: Sampling attributes, Physical properties, Chemistries, Trace elements, Organic compounds, Biology - Organism abundance/biomass, Biology - Production/uptake/respiration, Isotopes, Optics
  • Ecological Metadata Language http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/software/eml/ - XML application using modules to hold ecological metadata. The modules, once populated, contain information about datasets (including variables or "attributes", their definitions, units), citations, software, and protocols/methods. EML includes a coverage module, which can detail the geographic (bounding coordinates and a G-ring polygon definition), temporal (ISO 8601 Date and Time Specification) and standard taxonomic extents of the datasets.
  • Glossary of Physical Oceanography and Related Disciplines http://stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/paleo/ocean/ocean.html - alphabetical glossary of terms with definitions
  • IOC GF3 parameter codes http://ioc.unesco.org/oceanteacher/resourcekit/M3/Formats/Integrated/GF3/GF3.htm - listing of parameter codes, subsetted according to CTD data, moored current meter data, etc.
  • U.S. Globec Thesaurus http://globec.whoi.edu/globec-dir/thesaurus.html - alphabetical listing of field names with definitions and units
  • NOAA CO-OPs Tide and Current Glossary http://co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/publications/glossary2.pdf - alphabetical listing of terms with definitions
  • COARDS conventions (uses Unidata Udunits)http://ferret.wrc.noaa.gov/noaa_coop/coop_cdf_profile.html - set of structural conventions to promote the interchange of NetCDF files. The convention includes voluntary restrictions on file name, coordinate variables, global attributes, data variable attributes (long name, scale factor, add offset, fill value, missing value), units attribute, other attributes, variable names, rectilinear coordinate systems, number of dimensions, coordinate variable names, order of dimensions, data type, coordinate value ordering, coordinate variable attributes, time or date dimension, climatological time, vertical dimension, latitude dimension, longitude dimension. COARDS includes conventions for identifying coordinate axes (longitude, latitude, vertical and time) and for specifying units and missing data values).
  • EPIC
  • Climate and Forecast Metadata convention (extension to COARDS convention for NetCDF files, but can also be applied to XML) http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/eaton/cf-metadata or http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/eaton/cf-metadata/standard_name.html (see Ocean Dynamics link) - It is a standard to distinguish quantities (physical description, units, prior processing, etc.) and to locate the data in space and time and as a function of other independent variables (coordinates). CF has extra features, such as conventions for grid-cell boundaries, horizontal grids other than latitude-longitude, recording common statistical operations, standardized identification of physical quantities, non-spatiotemporal axes, climatological statistics and data compression. CF also includes the standard_name string attribute, whose value is one from the CF standard name table. There are a few hundred entires in the table.
  • Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology (SWEET)ontologies http://sweet.jpl.nasa.gov/ontology/ - ontologies represented in the Ontology Web Language for Earth Realms, Numerics, Phenomena (any transient feature), Physical Properties, Space, Physical Substances,Time,Units, Dataset Properties. The ontologies include some class-subclass relationships between terms as well as other restrictions (e.g., disjoint from). The ontologies are not very specific. Crosswalks have been done to the GCMD and ESMF/CF.
  • SEA-COOS listing SEACOOS_Data_SetDictionary.xls - includes standard names that are coordinate-related, time_date names, atmospheric data, physical oceanographic, chemical oceanographic, electromagnetic radiation, ADCP, sensor-related, platform-related, M_aeri data-related, and navigation. For each name, there is a definition, short name, long name, data type, data class, units, axis, valid range, parameter reference, instrument general, equivalent standard name, and standard. Very thorough, but only in spreadsheet form. Update - there is now an online version which other groups are open to extend or experiment using their own content - see http://twiki.sura.org/bin/view/Main/DataDictionary#Online_Data_Dictionary_utility
  • ARGO/Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment(GODAE) NetCDF profile http://www.ifremer.fr/coriolis/cdc/argo/argo-dm-user-manual.pdf - NetCDF profile specifically designed for ARGO/GODAE data. Includes names, definitions, formats.
  • World Meterological Organization (WMO)- GRIB convention http://www.wmo.ch/web/www/WDM/Guides/Guide-binary-2.html - for gridded, binary data. Includes code for parameters and units (Table 2.)
  • World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) Global Ocean Data V3 NetCDF convention http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/ocean/GODAE/Projects/ServerWS/WOCE%20NetCDF%20Convention.pps - Includes field conventions for date, time, time of day, latitude, longitude, depth, pressure, temperature, SST, salinity, u, v, sea level (all include long_name, units, min_range, max_range)
  • EPIC NetCDF convention - http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/epic/document/convention.htm - includes 4 axes: longitude, latitude, depth, and time as well as a list of variable names and codes, and standard attributes
  • NVODS Mooring Metadata Model - http://www.po.gso.uri.edu/tracking/nvods/projects/mooringmetadatamodel/ - Based on COARDS and CF. In development
  • Data Format Proposal from the Ocean Sites Project aka Global Time Series oceansites-user-manual1.doc - This includes a listing of parameter codes with long_name, units, valid-min, valid_max, C_format and FORTRAN format resolutions, fill value, and EPIC code.
  • MBARI Biological Ocean Group (BOG) Shipboard CTD data dictionary. A partial list of samples collected for the Monterey Bay Time Series. - http://www.mbari.org/bog/mmug/MMUG_table.htm

Managing Units

The following information is especially applicable to the final goal.

  • Unidata Udunits library http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/udunits/ - "supports conversion of unit specifications between formatted and binary forms, arithmetic manipulation of unit specifications, and conversion of values between compatible scales of measurement."

General Protocols

These are protocols which are focused on the schema, rather than the controlled vocabulary itself.

  • SensorML http://vast.uah.edu/SensorML/ - XML application for information about in situ and remote sensors
  • Marine XML (European) http://www.marinexml.net/ - based on the GCMD and the BODC. In-progress development of an XML application for marine data. This work also involves the development of a marine data ontology framework.
  • FGDC (Extensions may be specified that create a controlled vocabulary.)

Early Stages

These standards may not be far enough along to specify variable names.

Less Relevant

These standards do not address the kind of data we're dealing with in this exercise.

Posted September 17th, 2006 by graybeal