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Due to the current gap in continued funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the NSF Unidata Program Center has temporarily paused most operations. See NSF Unidata Pause in Most Operations for details.
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Don Murray wrote:
John- John Caron wrote:Well, maybe you're right. I notice that CF currently doesnt require vertical coords. But as a visualizing client, how do you display? Wouldnt you prefer to insist on something?No. We import lots of data point data stored in text files that only has lat/lon coords. In the IDV, we plot the data at the default Z location defined by the user if we don't have a Z dimension. We don't always want to assume 0 for the Z value.
Just to be clear: this is not about making assumptions about where the z value is (sorry i said that earlier), in fact its the opposite: requiring the data provider to explicitly specify the z position of point data, in order to be CF compliant.
It seems like the possible options are:1. z coordinate required, with values convertible to height (eg meters), with a vertical datum (reference surface like "mean sea level") specified.
2. z coordinate required, with values convertible to height (eg meters). 3. z coordinate required, with values in any vertical coordinate system. 4. z coordinate required, may be a "nominal" value (just a string description) 5. No z coordinate required.I would lean towards 4, but could be convinced of 5 or 3. We should however recommend the data provider add as much info as possible, and make sure there is a standard way to do so.
Could I ask data providers to chime in : how much z info are you willing and able to put in your files?
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