Recipe: File naming conventions

Problem

We want to understand the file naming conventions of G5NR products

Solution

The standard generic complete name for G5NR products appear as

c1440_NR.collection.timestamp.nc4

where

c1440_NR

the c1440 token indicates the resolution of the cubed-sphere grid. 1440² is the number of grid points in each face of the cubed-sphere. NR stands for Nature Run.

collection

The operational GEOS-5 data are organized into file collections that contain fields with common characteristics. However, computational considerations required that 3D collections have a single variable in them. Collection names are of the form

freq_dims_group_HV 

where the four attributes (freq,dims,group,HV) are:

freq: time-independent (const), instantaneous (instF), time-average (tavgF), diurnally time-averaged (tdavF) where F indicates the frequency or averaging interval and can be any of the following:

30mn = every 30 minutes 
01hr = hourly 
01mo = monthly 

The tdavF files typically contain monthly diurnal files, meaning, monthly means for each hour of the day: 0 UTC, 1 UTC, …, 23UTC.

dims: 2d for collections with only 2-dimensional fields or 3d for collections with a mix of 2- and 3-dimensional fields.

group: A short mnemonic for the type of fields in the collection, or the variable name for single-variable collections.

HV: Horizontal and Vertical grid.