metadata

Standard metadata entries

The metadata line is deliberately flexible - it's OK to use it for anything, as required. But we should standardise, where possible, on common entries. For example:

Abbreviation	Value	Description
orig	=any	Original observation value with units (e.g. '33F', '29.78in')
orig.date	=any	Original observation date, when different from the date provided in the Year, Month, Day columns (e.g. '23 September 1902')
orig.time	=any	Original observation time (e.g. '14:30', 'noon')
atb	=any	Only for pressure: original temperature of the barometer with units (e.g. '55F')
qc	=any	Any meaningful flag description/code from the quality control (e.g. the name of a test failed by the observation)
PTC	=[Y,N,?]	Only for pressure: have the observations been corrected for temperature?
PGC	=[Y,N,?]	Only for pressure: have the observations been corrected for gravity?
Alias	=any	Alternative station name
QC software	=any	Name and version of the software used for the QC (if any)
Data policy	=any	Data licence, see here for some examples (e.g. 'WMO essential')
Calendar	=any	To be used if a calendar different from the Gregorian is adopted, in particular for monthly data (e.g. 'Julian')

Capitalized abbreviations in this table can be used in the header (in that case they apply to all observations provided in the SEF file, except where the same entries appear in the Meta column).