ESGF Earth Sciences Metadata¶
ESGF Earth Sciences metadata is intended to support accurate and powerful searches across distributed Earth Sciences data collections. Metadata fields are defined in the ESGF meta-schema file geo.xml. Although this schema is always used during validation, all metadata fields contained within are optional, so it doesn’t really preclude records from being ingested (unless their values are malformed).
Optional Earth Science Generic Fields¶
variable (string): short variable name
Example: variable = ta
variable_long_name (string): longer variable name for human consumption
Example: variable_long_name = Air Temperature
variable_units (string): variable units
Example: variable_units = K
cf_standard_name (string chosen from Controlled Vocabulary): term from the CF (Climate and Forecast) CV
Example: cf_standard_name = air_temperature
Optional Fields used for Geospatial and Temporal Searches¶
datetime_start (date): start of data time coverage
Note: must have the format: yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ss’Z’
Example: datetime_start = 2090-01-01T12:00:00Z
datetime_stop (date): end of data time coverage
Note: must have the format: yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ss’Z’
Example: datetime_stop = 2229-12-31T12:00:00Z
north_degrees (float)
Note: must be -90 <= north_degrees <=90
Example: north_degrees = 89.25
east_degrees (float)
Note: must be -180 <= east_degrees <=360
Example: east_degrees = 358
south_degrees (float)
Note: must be -90 <= south_degrees <=90
Example: south_degrees = -89.25
west_degrees (float)
Note: must be -180 <= west_degrees <=360
Example: west degrees = 0.0
height_bottom (float)
Example: height_bottom = 100000.0
height_top (float)
Example: height_top = 1000.0
height_units (string)
Example: height_units = Pa