Skip to content

Incorrect result units for some differential operators #807

Closed

Description

@davidhassell

When the axis of differentiation has units (equivalent to) radians, the differential operators curl_xy, div_xy, grad_xy, and laplacian_xy display an inapproriate radian-1 or radian-2 component to the returned Field units. E.g.

>>> import cf
>>> f = cf.example_field(0)
>>> f.grad_xy(radius='earth')  # WRONG
[<CF Field: long_name=X gradient of specific_humidity(latitude(5), longitude(8)) m-1.rad-1>,
 <CF Field: long_name=Y gradient of specific_humidity(latitude(5), longitude(8)) m-1.rad-1>]
>>> # SHOULD BE
#[<CF Field: long_name=X gradient of specific_humidity(latitude(5), longitude(8)) m-1>,
# <CF Field: long_name=Y gradient of specific_humidity(latitude(5), longitude(8)) m-1>]

Units of radian are dimensionless, and in the context of these operators it is misleading for them to appear in the output. For instance, the curl of the horizontal wind fields in spherical polar corodinates should have units of s-1 (i.e. relative vorticity), not "s-1.radian-1".

The agreed solution is to provide an option to Field.derivative that just pretends that the coordinates along the axis of differentiation are dimensionless (i.e. have units of 1) when instructed to do so with a keyword argument.

Activity

  1. added this to the NEXT VERSION milestone on Sep 2, 2024
  2. sadielbartholomew commented on Sep 3, 2024

    @sadielbartholomew
    Member

    The agreed solution is to provide an option to Field.derivative that just pretends that the coordinates along the axis of differentiation are dimensionless (i.e. have units of 1) when instructed to do so with a keyword argument.

    Good write up thanks and yes, this is how I interpreted our agreed solution.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    bugSomething isn't working

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions