Russ Rew: Re: 961010: NetCDF storage question

Oops, forgot to CC: support-netcdf
------- Forwarded Message

Date:    Thu, 10 Oct 1996 14:35:12 -0600
From:    Russ Rew <address@hidden>
To:      address@hidden (Claude Williams)
Subject: Re: 961010: NetCDF storage question 

>To: address@hidden
>cc: address@hidden
>From: address@hidden (Claude Williams)
>Subject: In Situ observations & netCDF
>Keywords: 199610101900.AA00303

Hi Claude,

> I am a systems analyst at the NCDC in Asheville, NC. I am developing
> a JAVA interface for data access, visualization, and retrieval for 
> a variety of climate observations. At present, I am using the NOAA/PMEL
> Live Access Server for gridded data. This application uses FERRET for
> displaying netCDF datasets and works quite well. 
> 
> However, my question is:
> 
> We have station, ship, and hurricane observations that we would like
> to use the same type of package with. Does the netCDF support point
> and line data as well as array data?

Yes.  You can have a dimension for location, and use variables
dimensioned by that to represent the location's latitude, longitude, name,
surface pressure, surface temperature, etc.  If you also need a level
dimension for multi-level parameters at each location, this would be an
additional dimension.

> If so, can you direct me to the specific documentation that addresses
> these issues?

There's some examples of CDL files that contain this kind of information
in the following URLs:

General conventions:
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/NUWG/
COARDS conventions:
  http://ferret.wrc.noaa.gov/noaa_coop/coop_cdf_profile.html
COARDS example CDL file:
  http://ferret.wrc.noaa.gov/noaa_coop/coop_cdf_example.html
Lightning:
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/NUWG/fsl-lightning.cdl
Wind profiler:
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/NUWG/fsl-rass-hourly.cdl
Mesonet obs:
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/NUWG/fsl-mesonet.cdl
Buoy obs:
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/NUWG/fsl-buoy.cdl
Upper-air obs:
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/NUWG/fsl-raob.cdl
Another upper-air obs example:
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/NUWG/upair.cdl
Surface obs:
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/NUWG/sao.cdl

- --Russ

_____________________________________________________________________

Russ Rew                                         UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu

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