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1. Nouns are environmental things
Concept
A noun identifies the environmental information you want; a required source flavor identifies the provider and product that give it observational meaning. Begin with the shared setup.
Tiny example
data.sources("temperature")
Explanation
Available flavors come from the implemented catalog. The
temperature reference defines units,
coverage and returned data. cube here is a frozen observed extract that
avoids a network request while teaching.
A shared noun is a common entry point, not a claim that sources are equivalent. PRISM and gridMET temperature retain their native variables, units, grids, statistics, revisions, and provenance. Always inspect the source flavor before treating a noun as a scientific observation.
Try it / worked example
cube.isel(time=0).plot() # Inspect one day before summarizing the month.
plt.show()
Find the spatial coordinates and units. The noun describes the measurements; selecting one day is an explicit analytical choice.
Not every noun is a space–time raster. Elevation is a static field, roads are vector features, and streamflow is a station time series. Their references document the installed imports, source flavors, and compatible operations. Follow the noun lessons to see each object used in a short, reproducible pipe.