ISTP Metadata Guidelines

Ramona L. Kessel, Robert E. McGuire, D. Aaron Roberts, Robert M. Candey, Andriy Koval, Reine Chimiak, Lan Jian, Tamara J. Kovalick, Sarah M. Fooks, Eric W. Grimes, Bernard T. Harris, Alfredo A. Cruz, Rita C. Johnson, Fernando Carcaboso Morales

Abstract

International Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) Metadata Guidelines for describing the internal meaning of self-describing scientific data formats, such as CDF and netCDF in Heliophysics. Originally developed in the early 1990’s as part of the ISTP science initiative for use by the Polar, Wind, Geotail and Cluster missions, they were later adopted by the Interagency Consultative Group (IACG) for Space Science. The Guidelines are now used by most of the major heliophysics missions, including MMS, Van Allen Probes, Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter and IMAP, and are supported by numerous display and analysis tools, including CDAWeb, Autoplot, SpacePy and PySPEDAS/SPEDAS.

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Self-Describing Scientific Data Formats
• 3. ISTP Global Attributes
• 4. ISTP Variables
• 5. ISTP Variable Attributes
• 6. Dictionary Keywords
• 7. File and Dataset Naming Practices

• Appendix A. Variable Examples
• Appendix B. Skeleton Table Examples
• Appendix C. Multi-Mission Use of ISTP Attributes
• Appendix D. Non-ISTP Mission Global Attributes
• Appendix E. Non-ISTP Mission Variable Attributes
• Appendix F. Best Practices
• Appendix G. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)