can the "time" variable(s?) be called something other than "time"?

[aportagain]

We've had some similar discussions in the past, how to identify time variables / dimensions / coordinates, following CF conventions, with or without access to udunits, and so on. Annick recently brought this up again (although more aimed at regrid), related discussion on Slack in #ops-development: https://metocean.slack.com/archives/C014SM7A5AN/p1680230791844669 .

[aportagain]

Some code in this repo currently definitely does rely on the variable having the name "time", for example:

cf-json/cfjson/xrdataset.py

Lines 84 to 88 in 21a3d2e

	if var == 'time':
	vals=[t.strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ') for t in to_datetime(rawvals)]
	res['variables'][varout]['data']=vals
	else:
	res['variables'][varout]['data']=rawvals.tolist()

[aportagain]

Almost certainly the case in some of our other repos too (e.g., regrid-api / interpolation_library).

[aportagain]

And at the moment, I'm pretty sure we're not requiring that name by convention (CF 1.10 definitely doesn't care: "This convention does not standardize any variable or dimension names.", and we don't mention it in our API conventions 1.1.1 either), so that combo is of course not ideal... :)

https://cfconventions.org/Data/cf-conventions/cf-conventions-1.10/cf-conventions.html#_naming_conventions
https://github.com/metocean/api-conventions/tree/60b0126c5d809a889a61985449e7fbcdae714768