12. Glossary
- data kind
data kinds
- Descriptive term for what the data measures. Common data kinds are
brightness temperature, reflectance, or radiance. Data kinds are
created and set by the frontend. While most frontends have the
same descriptive term for a product, it is not required and in some
cases may not be desired. Note that Data kinds are different from
data types.
- data type
data types
- Size or format of the binary representation of the data. For example
an 8-bit unsigned integer versus a 32-bit floating point number.
Data types are different from data kinds. Data types consist
of two parts: the format of the data and the number of bytes used.
The current set of available data types can be found in the
polar2grid.core.dtype module.
- glue script
glue scripts
- The script connecting every component together. A glue script connects
a frontend, the remapper, compositors, and a backend. There is only one
actual glue script in the python source code, but it has access to all
the possible components that can be used. In the CSPP tarball, the
individual glue bash scripts (ex. viirs2gtiff.sh) are just simple wrappers
around the python call python -m polar2grid.glue <frontend> <backend> -vv ...,
except for in rare cases where specific defaults are needed.
- gridded product
gridded products
- Products that have been mapped to a uniform grid. These are usually
created from swath products by remapping.
- product
products
- A swath of instrument data. When from a Polar2Grid Frontend a product is considered
a swath product. After a swath product has been remapped it is considered
a gridded product.
- raw product
raw products
- Swath product created by a frontend requiring little more than reading the data from
a data file. It is common for raw products to require scaling from the raw
data stored in the file using a scaling factor and offset. There are also a few
cases where raw products require additional masking (ex. cloud clearing) that
requires another product. In this way, raw products are sometimes treated as
secondary products. To allow for more flexibility when raw products
require extra processing, frontends should consider having access to the
original raw product and a secondary product created from that original product,
rather than one single product. Obviously this depends on the usefulness of
the original product to potential uses.
- secondary product
secondary products
- :term:Swath product <swath product>` created by a frontend requiring one or more other products and some
extra processing. Secondary products may require raw products or other
secondary products.
- swath product
swath products
- Products representing the direct observations of a satellite
instrument. Swath products are not guaranteed to be uniformly spaced and are usually
not.
