Improving the Interoperability of CF Standard Names in Environmental Science

Standard names are a controlled vocabulary, used to label the geophysical variables within CF compliant data. There are currently almost 4,500 entries in the published standard name table with a further 100 under consideration for future inclusion. CF standard names are wide ranging, covering many scientific variables used in atmospheric science, oceanography and other parts of the earth system important to climate science, for example, sea ice, land ice and vegetation. The meaning and correct usage of each term is published as descriptive text in the CF standard name table, accompanied by a canonical unit of measure. The CF community discussion process helps to make each name and its description as unambiguous as possible and accurately describe the contents of scientific variables. The CF conventions, and consequently the standard names, originated within the climate modelling community but are increasingly being applied to observational datasets, both satellite and in situ, and are gaining attention within the wider environmental science community. Environmental scientists working on topics such as biodiversity, environmental chemistry and ecology have also developed controlled vocabularies, taxonomies and ontologies (collectively referred to as observable property terminologies) to describe variables in their respective scientific domains. There are many overlaps between terms in existing observable property terminologies but the lack of a common framework to translate between them can be a barrier to data interoperability and building integrated services. The Research Data Alliance (RDA) InteroperAbility of Observable Property Terminology (I-ADOPT) Working Group was formed in October 2019 and has followed an 18 month work plan, recently extended for a further 3 months, to deliver a common interoperability framework for observable property variables. This presentation will introduce the I-ADOPT Interoperability Framework for machine-readable variable descriptions and will explain its semantic components. These represent the building blocks for specific ontology design patterns addressing different use cases and varying degrees of complexity in describing variables. We will show how the proposed design patterns apply to CF standard names and other environmental variables.