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