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20031111: IDV and NOMADS

Hi Glenn-

Hopefully, you are the person to talk to about this.  If not,
please forward it to the appropriate person.

Recently, a user tried to access some data from the NOMADS
site using the IDV.  The link he tried was:

http://nomads.ncdc.noaa.gov:9090/dods/NCDC_NOAAPort_GFS/200205/20020504/gfs-avn_201_20020504_0000_fff

From this, he was able to access the 2D variables in the dataset,
but was unable to access the 3D vars.  The problem is that the
units of the vertical dimension come back as "mb".  Now,
while every meteorologist knows this should be millibars,
the udunits package which uses international standards
interprets this as "millibits".  The data purports to
adhere to the COARDS conventions, but using "mb" as the
unit of pressure is not consistent with this since it
is not a valid unit for pressure.  It should be "millibar"
or even "hPa".

We will try to put some fix in on our end, but I was wondering
if you could investigate why the DODS server is returning
non-conforming unit specifications.

Also, the units for each parameter are null.  I think we discussed
this before, but if you have any more information, please let me
know.

Thanks.

Don
*************************************************************
Don Murray                               UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                        P.O. Box 3000
(303) 497-8628                              Boulder, CO 80307
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/staff/donm
"There's someone in my head, but it's not me"    Roger Waters
*************************************************************