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A namespace in ecCodes is just a fancy word for a grouping of related keys. The following are available:

• ls: This is the namespace used by the grib_ls and bufr_ls tools and has the most commonly used keys e.g. center, shortName, level, etc
• parameter: Contains keys like paramId, shortName, units which relate to the meteorological parameter
• statistics: Contains keys that relate to the statistics of the data values e.g. maximum, minimum, average, standard deviation, etc
• time: Contains keys that describe the forecast runs e.g. forecast date, validity date, steps, etc
• geography: Contains keys that describe the grid geometry e.g. bounding box of the grid, number of points along with a parallel, etc
• vertical: Contains keys that describe the levels and layers e.g. type of the level, list of coefficients of the vertical coordinate, etc
• mars: Contains the list of MARS (ECMWF's Meteorological Archive and Retrieval System) keywords like class, stream, type, etc

The contents of a namespace can vary depending on the type of GRIB message, for example the geography namespace will contain the pl key for reduced grids but not for regular grids.