Rename dims independently from coords?

I have a dataset that looks like this:

<xarray.Dataset>
Dimensions:  (lat: 226, lon: 261, time: 7300)
Coordinates:
  * lat      (lat) float32 -32.0 -31.9 -31.8 -31.7 ... -9.700001 -9.6 -9.5
  * lon      (lon) float32 132.0 132.1 132.2 132.3 ... 157.7 157.8 157.9 158.0
  * time     (time) object 1980-01-01 15:00:00 ... 1999-12-31 15:00:00
Data variables:
    rnd24    (time, lat, lon) float32 ...

Problem description

I would like to be able to rename the dataset dimensions, without renaming the coordinates.

Expected Output

<xarray.Dataset>
Dimensions:  (y: 226, x: 261, time: 7300)
Coordinates:
  * lat      (y) float32 -32.0 -31.9 -31.8 -31.7 ... -9.700001 -9.6 -9.5
  * lon      (x) float32 132.0 132.1 132.2 132.3 ... 157.7 157.8 157.9 158.0
  * time     (time) object 1980-01-01 15:00:00 ... 1999-12-31 15:00:00
Data variables:
    rnd24    (time, y, x) float32 ...

As far as I can tell, there is no way to do this. I can rename the existing dims/coords to x/y, and then manually create new coordinates that are copies of x and y, which gets me to:

<xarray.Dataset>
Dimensions:  (time: 7300, x: 261, y: 226)
Coordinates:
  * y        (y) float32 -32.0 -31.9 -31.8 -31.7 ... -9.700001 -9.6 -9.5
  * x        (x) float32 132.0 132.1 132.2 132.3 ... 157.7 157.8 157.9 158.0
  * time     (time) object 1980-01-01 15:00:00 ... 1999-12-31 15:00:00
    lat      (y) float32 -32.0 -31.9 -31.8 -31.7 ... -9.700001 -9.6 -9.5
    lon      (x) float32 132.0 132.1 132.2 132.3 ... 157.7 157.8 157.9 158.0
Data variables:
    rnd24    (time, y, x) float32 ...

But it doesn’t seem to be possible to re-assign the new coordinates as the indexes for the existing dims.

In this case, it may seem a bit redundant, because the coordinates are equal to the grid. But I’m trying to get this output to work with code that also deals with other datasets that have non- rectilinear grids.

[dcherian]

Hi @jukent, if you edit the first comment of your pull request you should be able to change it to Closes #3026 which will automatically close this issue when that PR is merged.

[jukent]

I will submit a pull request to add separate rename dims and rename coords functions in a day or two.