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pangeo-data / xESMF

Universal Regridder for Geospatial Data
http://xesmf.readthedocs.io/
MIT License
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Fix apparent typo upscaling → downscaling #376

Closed maresb closed 2 days ago

maresb commented 3 days ago

Hey, I was getting really confused when reading this paragraph. I think "downscaling" was the intended word here.

If I have my definitions straight, upscaling refers to converting to an image to a higher resolution, while downscaling means decreasing the resolution.

This paragraph occurs in the "Decreasing resolution" section, which thus should correspond to "downscaling". Furthermore, I think downscaling/decreasing resolution is correct because this direction is many-to-one, so the reasoning for conservative makes sense only in this direction where many source pixels are available.

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aulemahal commented 2 days ago

I understand the confusion this words can bring and maybe there's in fact an error here. However, in climate science, "downscaling" refers to the act of decreasing the size of the grid cell, i.e. increasing the resolution. See https://climate.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/2021-01/infosheet8.pdf for instance.

However, the opposite is not something that is done often, so the word "upscaling" doesn't have the same recognized meaning.

So, I agree that we should change this confusing word, but I wouldn't use "downscaling" which has a meaning of its own for climate scientist, who are highly likely to be using this package.

maresb commented 2 days ago

Thanks so much @aulemahal for the explanation and the reference! The larger the grid, the lower the resolution, so I guess it depends on which of these two objects you up/down-scale.