Definitions and conventions#

Here are a few of the conventions and definitions we use across Verde:

Coordinate types#: Coordinates can be Cartesian or Geographic. We generally make no assumptions about which one you’re using.
Order of coordinates#: Coordinates are usually given as West-East and South-North. For example, longitude, latitude or easting, northing. All functions and classes expect coordinates in this order. This applies to the actual coordinate values, bounding regions, grid spacing, etc. Exceptions to this rule are the dims and shape arguments.
Coordinate names#: We don’t use names like “x” and “y” to avoid ambiguity. Cartesian coordinates are “easting” and “northing” and Geographic coordinates are “longitude” and “latitude”. Sometimes this doesn’t make sense, like when using a polar projection, but we keep the convention for the sake of consistency.
Region#: The term “region” means the bounding box of the data. It is ordered west, east, south, north.