How to do vector fields under CF?

[twhitehead]

Question

Have been trying to figure out how to encode a vector (velocity) using the CF standard. Seems like there are at least three ways this could be done

• storing each component separably
• adding a dimension of length 3
• defining a custom compound type

but I can't figure out which would be compatible with the CF conversion. Seems that other have had this problem too. For example, here is someone asking on the ParaView mailing list.

[sethmcg]

Option 1 is the standard way to store velocity fields. If you search the standard name table for "velocity", you'll find lots of something_something_x_velocity, etc.

[ChrisBarker-NOAA]

NOTE: there have been multiple discussions in the past about having another way to more explicitly store vector data, but AFAIK, as @sethmcg said, your option (1) -- store each component individually, is the CF way.