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Issues and source files for CF controlled vocabularies
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Standard names: Deprecate "convective_precipitation_rate" in favour of existing "lwe_convective_precipitation_rate" #210

Closed larsbarring closed 3 months ago

larsbarring commented 3 months ago

Lars Bärring

2024-08-12

The standard name convective_precipitation_rate with units m s-1 is problematic because the term precipitation aggregates different phases of water meaning that the thickness is ill-defined (see here (at the bottom) and here). Hence:

Alias convective_precipitation_rate in favour of existing lwe_convective_precipitation_rate

github-actions[bot] commented 3 months ago

Thank you for your proposal. These terms will be added to the cfeditor (http://cfeditor.ceda.ac.uk/proposals/1) shortly. Your proposal will then be reviewed and commented on by the community and Standard Names moderator.

taylor13 commented 3 months ago

While we're at it, and pending outcome of the discussion at https://github.com/cf-convention/vocabularies/issues/67, perhaps the description of these needs to be revised to indicate this is surface precipitation.

efisher008 commented 3 months ago

Hi Lars @larsbarring ,

The name convective_precipitation_rate has been aliased to the existing name lwe_convective_precipitation_rate as you recommended. This issue should remain open as there will be a need to revise the definition of the phrase "precipitation" in the description to be consistent with #67, as @taylor13 has mentioned.

Best wishes, Ellie

larsbarring commented 3 months ago

Thanks Ellie @efisher008!

@taylor13: I think that all standard names related to any form of precipitation and expressed as a rate having units m s-1 have to refer to what is arriving at the ground because the unit m I think is only relevant in relation to a surface (as opposed to a layer in the atmosphere).

@efisher008: As this issue is specifically dealing with the aliasing (and nothing else) maybe we could close it? I am not sure it is helpful to spread out the revision of descriptions of all the many different "precip" standard names in several issues. What do you think?

JonathanGregory commented 3 months ago

I agree with Lars's comment

@taylor13: I think that all standard names related to any form of precipitation and expressed as a rate having units m s-1 have to refer to what is arriving at the ground because the unit m I think is only relevant in relation to a surface (as opposed to a layer in the atmosphere).

It refers to the rate at which the precipitation accumulates in a notional collector on the ground. It's the rate of change of the accumulated thickness. If it was in the atmosphere m s-1 would probably refer to the speed of fall, which is a different thing.