Parameter Name Standards for Marine Data:

Background

In January, 2008, the IOC and JCOMM convened a workshop entitled the IODE/JCOMM Forum on Oceanographic Data Management and Exchange Standards (IOC Workshop Rept. 206), to consider selected principal issues on establishing marine data standards, with the goal of furthering marine data interoperability. In particular the aim of the workshop was to get broad agreement and commitment to adopt a number of standards related to ocean data management and exchange, thereby assembling not only the agreed conditions by which we operate, but in fact enact these agreements in the participants' respective organizations.

Standards Recommendation

Mr. Etienne Charpentier (WMO) introduced this item and moderated discussions. He reviewed the various lists that exist for identifying parameters. He focused attention on Parameter Usage Vocabularies (PUVs) that label single data values and may also be used for discovery. In this context he addressed the following: BODC, NetCDF CF, NetCDF EPIC and BUFR, but also mentioned MEDATLAS, SEACOOS, JGOFS, GLOBEC, GF3, GTSOPP and GRIB. Mr. Charpentier proposed to focus on specific disciplines first to limit the number of parameters (e.g. Physical oceanography, marine meteorology) and to consider BODC, BUFR, CF and EPIC. They should provide for the following attributes: unique ID, name, definition, collection ID and version ID. He further stressed the need for mapping between the aforementioned.

• Resources on the UK NERC Data Grid Vocabulary Server - The Vocabulary Server is a Web Service API implemented both as SOAP and pseudo-restful HTTP-POX interfaces, containing many vocabularies gathered by UK scientists
  • BODC Use Metadata Parameters List - List P011 contains all measurement terms, including physical measurements. This list is enormous (~19,000 terms), so should not normally be downloaded. The surprising number is due to the fact that the BODC register includes both parameters and methods to measure the parameters. [Similarly named lists contain working datasets, and should not be consulted]
    • ca. 19,000 records
    • 8-character codes, unique to each and every parameter ever encountered
    • Plus an abbreviated term that is human-readable in most cases, after some orientation
  • BODC Discovery Metadata Parameters List - This list is relatively manageable in size, because the terms are more generalized than the Use Metadata link, above. [Similarly named lists contain working datasets, and should not be consulted]
• CF Convention NetCDF Standard Names
  • ca. 800 records
  • Full, well-formed names of all parameters, but no codes
• U.S NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory EPIC Codes to Operational NetCDF Units - See important note below about this link
  • ca. 800 records
  • Each record has a unique code number from 1 to 9993
  • The units are specified as part of the parameter
  • The official list of codes and names is called the Key File; save the file from the above link to your computer and change the filename extension to TXT for local use; the current filename extension KEY is registered to a sensitive Windows function
• Operational Codes TAC - BUFR - CREX - GRIB - Tables documenting common WMO formats, including parameter codes
  • A BUFR file consists of up to about 40 elements, many of which contain "metadata" type information
  • Data elements, parallel to the BODC and NetCDF concepts, occur mainly in elements 10, 11, 12, 15, 19, 22 and possibly 23
  • Each parameter has a unique numerical code called the Descriptor and an acronym-style Mnemonic, as well as a full name Description.