The American-style count and recount of the votes has gone on long enough. It's decision time. After lots of input and discussion, it has been decided that the format for the GLIMS glacier ID (primary key in the Glacier_Static table) shall be: GnnnnnnEmmmmm[N|S] where [N|S] means "either N or S", nnnnnn has the range [000000,359999], and mmmmm has the range [00000,90000]. (For those who like W/E for longitude, note that the longitude of the point lon/lat coordinate in the Glacier_Static table will have the range [-180,180].) Note that this differs a bit from what is documented on the GLIMS website; I hope to update that sometime soon. The ID has the following features: - An ID can be assigned to a newly analyzed glacier independent of other groups. - The ID is not tied to any political boundaries or nationalities. - It is human-readable. - The implied 3-decimal-point precision defines a grid over the earth with a maximum spacing of 111 m. Attached is sample perl code to generate IDs from a list of lon/lat coordinates. Given the test input file # some test cases 0 0 360 10 -180 90 180 -90 -181 89.9999 -179 -89.9999 -360 89.999 -0.1 0.1 # some mostly real cases 12.71500 46.95167 12.90667 46.61167 89.86667 28.21667 -125.22383 49.20283 -125.22310 45.20283 8.77200 46.73967 8.81450 46.73633 -78.42000 -1.65333 -78.41333 -1.66667 -78.42333 -1.67667 169.87383 -43.99317 169.89667 -43.98967 -76.49850 -11.15967 -75.07533 -11.85917 -119.29167 37.75000 the output looks like: 0 0 G000000E00000N 360 10 G000000E10000N -180 90 G180000E90000N 180 -90 G180000E90000S -181 89.9999 G179000E90000N -179 -89.9999 G181000E90000S -360 89.999 G000000E89999N -0.1 0.1 G359900E00100N 12.71500 46.95167 G012715E46952N 12.90667 46.61167 G012907E46612N 89.86667 28.21667 G089867E28217N -125.22383 49.20283 G234776E49203N -125.22310 45.20283 G234777E45203N 8.77200 46.73967 G008772E46740N 8.81450 46.73633 G008815E46736N -78.42000 -1.65333 G281580E01653S -78.41333 -1.66667 G281587E01667S -78.42333 -1.67667 G281577E01677S 169.87383 -43.99317 G169874E43993S 169.89667 -43.98967 G169897E43990S -76.49850 -11.15967 G283501E11160S -75.07533 -11.85917 G284925E11859S -119.29167 37.75000 G240708E37750N Cheers, Bruce -- Bruce Raup National Snow and Ice Data Center Phone: 303-492-8814 University of Colorado, 449 UCB Fax: 303-492-2468 Boulder, CO 80309-0449 braup@nsidc.org