Discussions from AGAGE69

[lukewestern]

The following is a summary of the outstanding discussion and outcomes from AGAGE69. Some of these points may be better split into individual issues.

• [x] Should the folder named ‘event’ be changed to something more descriptive?

• [x] - Update/check data policy as it was likely taken from an out-of-date version on the AGAGE website

• [x] - Debate over whether to keep all gases as lowercase. Seemed the opinion was that it should stay that way.

• [x] - The instruments for CMN are currently separated and need to be combined into a single record

• [x] - There may be some problems with “non-AGAGE” measurements at an AGAGE site (e.g., measurements may be made as part of a previous network that is not ALE/GAGE/AGAGE but would like to be considered as AGAGE).

• [x] - Whether to include the instrument in the filename [vote was to remove instrument]

• [x] - The time in the netcdf files does not currently state that the time is UTC

• [ ] - CHECK: CGO CH3CCl3 CGAA data may have had pollution events removed in the record. Need to add to the README that this has been done. Need to double check whether that has been done to other compounds as well. Paul F. suggests to look at all compounds. It should be obvious by eye if there is a difference between CGAA and ALE.

• [x] - Overlap of instruments: should instruments switch cleanly at one time, or be able to temporarily switch back and forth.

• [x] - Decision was for this to be a decision from data managers.

• [x] - May be some issues when changing between two of the same instrument (e.g,, 2 picarros). This is already noted in issue #44.

• [ ] - Known outstanding issues:

• [ ]  _pdd naming of H2 data files

• [x] - Unable to output Met Office baselines flags

• [ ] - Actions: Station PIs to report whether to use CFC-11 ALE/GAGE “S” or “P”

• [x] - Who will be responsible for maintaining this going forward? Ray Wang volunteered that he may be most appropriate

• Question around outputting in other file formats:

  • A human readable file format would be useful
  • Perhaps give the user the ability to output in multiple formats
  • A web tool may be best to output in a couple of desired formats

[mrghg]

From Ray Wang's talk:

• [x] - Add "event" to filename...
• [x] - ... but what about hourly Picarro data?
• [x] - Change mf_N to mf_count?
• [x] - Underscores in filename: AGAGE_ALE-GCMD_CGO_cfc-11_event_version.nc
• [x] - Make filename all lower case?
• [x] - Include Picarro model number in filename? Probably not for now?
• [x] - Remove "v1" for version string

[mrghg]

Proposed alternate naming: {network}{-instrument, optional}_{site}_{species}_{extra, optional-}{version}.nc

I.e., keep hyphens for the optional extra bits: instrument and "extra" string (e.g., "baseline-flag", "monthly-baseline"). This way, we always have three underscores, and the user always knows that site will be after the first underscore and species after the second.

[mrghg]

Couldn't decide on a better term than "event", so current idea is just to ignore it. Hard to get something that describes the high-frequency in-situ data combined with the hourly Picarro data. High-frequency files will just be directly in the species folder, and then individual instruments and monthly means will be in sub-folders