issue_comments: 1190052947

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https://github.com/pydata/xarray/issues/6771#issuecomment-1190052947 https://api.github.com/repos/pydata/xarray/issues/6771 1190052947 IC_kwDOAMm_X85G7sRT 703554 2022-07-20T09:36:10Z 2022-07-20T09:36:10Z CONTRIBUTOR

Hi @TomNicholas,

I would've thought that latitude and longitude would be 1-dimensional coordinate variables, yet they are drawn as 2-D arrays?

I think that if you assume that the axes of your grid data align with the cardinal directions (East-West / North-South) then you would expect latitude and longitude to be 1D, but if they don't align then the coordinates would need be 2D (i.e. if x and y are merely arbitrary lines along the Earth's surface).

I agree with you though that 2D lat/lon grids are unnecessarily confusing, especially for non-geoscience users.

Interesting, I hadn't considered that. Definitely a bit mind-bending though for us non-geoscientists :)

I like the second diagram you showed more (it's also a neater version of the labelled one I made here). I think it's debatable whether elevation and land_cover constitute coordinates or data variables, but I have no strong opinion on that.

As for improvements, I think it would be clearer to at least use the second image over the first, and perhaps we could improve it further.

SGTM. FWIW on the second diagram I would use "dimensions" instead of "indexes". Getting dimensions first then helps to explain how you can use a coordinate variable to index a dimension.

 
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