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Rename valid_time variable name #129
Description
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The time variable is called time for most netcdf datasets around. Since the update to the "new CDS", the data retrieved from CDS instead has a time variable called valid_time. This is inconvenient in our processes, so we rename it. I understand it is only a minor edit we have to do, but I was wondering if it could be considered to rename it back to time anyway.
Describe the solution you'd like
Rename the time variable to time instead of valid_time
Describe alternatives you've considered
Our current workaround, renaming the variable ourselves.
Additional context
No response
Organisation
Deltares
Reacted by Yannick, Marcelo Andrioni, Joel Richards and Bart van Stratum
Activity
jreniel commentedon Nov 5, 2024
Yes, this is one of the things that broke my workflow as well, and it is quite inconvenient to do this kind of compat breaking changes in the upstream. It's an unfortunate and hard to justify change.
bartvstratum commentedon Feb 4, 2025
Same here. To make matters worse, NetCDF files downloaded via MARS still follow the old naming convention. To ensure our software works with both old and new
cdsapifiles, as well as MARS, we saw no other option but to patch the new NetCDF files to make them consistent with the old ones.I understand that some changes were necessary (e.g., updating time units from
hours since …toseconds since …), but renaming variables or even dimensions is just frustrating for downstream users.