Compute vertical layer thicknesses for an ocean cube

Vertical bounds must be supplied explicitly or be present in cube metadata; they are never inferred from depth centres. Supported representations are an interface vector of length n_depth + 1 or an n_depth-by-2 matrix. Layer thickness is the positive distance between bounds, so axes declared positive upward or positive downward retain cube order without producing negative thicknesses.

Usage

cube_layer_thickness(x, depth_bounds = NULL, unit = c("native", "m", "km"))

Arguments

x

An ocean_cube() with a finite depth axis.

depth_bounds

Explicit vertical interfaces or paired bounds. If NULL, metadata attached to the cube is used.

unit

Output unit: native depth units, metres, or kilometres.

Value

A numeric vector in cube depth order.

Details

For NetCDF cubes, a certified dimensional metric-depth descriptor at x$metadata$cf$current$vertical supplies CF bounds automatically. Height, pressure, dimensionless, parametric, unresolved, and derivation-pending vertical coordinates are not geometric depth and are rejected. The supported physical-unit subset is metres and kilometres; no pressure-to-depth or height-to-depth conversion is performed.