[Go-essp-tech] grids in metafor, and the esg catalog

[Bryan Lawrence]

On Thursday 05 November 2009 15:27:25 Sylvia Murphy wrote:

> Bryan,  I am somewhat confused by the deliverable that you are  
> composing here...

:-) As have I been, hence all this :-)

> Are we talking about a separate grid XML sent to us sometime after the  
> questionnaire?
> 
> At one point we were anticipating that GFDL would be writing a program  
> to harvest the metadata contained within the gridspec files.  There  
> was an open question about what form that output would be in.  Are we  
> now talking about Metafor providing this info or is this a different  
> set of grid info?

The gist of the various conversations is that gridspec, in the time frame
of CMIP5, has one major application: regridding. We don't think the ESG
catalog needs to harvest gridspec files (although if it wants to, it could
do so directly from the data nodes, where they will reside).

However, we do think the catalog needs knowledge of grids, in the context
of the model, and the best way to do this is via quesionnire type questions.
(In the best possible world, we'd create a "join" of gridspec-type
info and questionnaire-type information).

We have most of those questions now, distributed in the mind-map (and
thus looking like subcomponents). We're talking about removing them
and putting it into it's own grid document (which we had always
planned on doing, but our original plan was this "join" which we
dont think we can produce or use sensibly right now).

However, it's only an idea right now :-)

Cheers
Bryan

-- 
Bryan Lawrence
Director of Environmental Archival and Associated Research
(NCAS/British Atmospheric Data Centre and NCEO/NERC NEODC)
STFC, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Phone +44 1235 445012; Fax ... 5848; 
Web: home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence