Discussion related to vertical coordinate interoperabilty

[grantfirl]

For parameterizations that rely on model conventions regarding the vertical grid, such as grid-type, vertical resolution, top/down orientation, etc… there is often the need to write interstitial code to couple these schemes with other schemes and the host.
Questions:
Is there interest in adding functionality to the ccpp-framework that would perform these transformations?

[gold2718]

I think this issue goes all the way back. For instance, see the "historical" CCPP requirements, note items C21 and H11.
Does anyone still have access to the Google doc where we discussed this years ago? I know that @grantfirl and @dudhia were involved and had opinions.

[gold2718]

One idea is to have a standard name, say vertical_coordinate_direction that has a string value determining the direction. We never did decide on the names for this. Some ideas:
top_down
bottom_up
one_is_lowest_model_level (or one_is_lowest_model_layer)
one_is_highest_model_level (or one_is_highest_model_layer)