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Re: 20050621:NetCDF header conventions

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  • Subject: Re: 20050621:NetCDF header conventions
  • Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 13:18:36 -0600
Unidata Support wrote:


------- Forwarded Message


To: address@hidden
From: Ramesh_S_Mantri <address@hidden>
Subject: NetCDF header conventions
Organization: CSC
Keywords: 200506211706.j5LH6pZu017718


Dear support folks,
   I need advice on the NetCDF header conventions to follow. We store
weather data in the NetCDF files - most of the time gridded data. Do you recommend that we use NUWG conventions or COARDS or any other? Please let me know. 

I was browsing at your website for info on conventions and found that
the last recorded NUWG meeting on this topic was in 1995. But I couldn't
find any concrete documentation on NUWG conventions.

Could you please E-mail me some documentation? Thank you for your
help. Regards,
sincerely,
Ramesh


----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: NetCDF header conventions
Date: Friday 17 June 2005 05:05 pm
From: Ramesh_S_Mantri <address@hidden>



  our application extracts weather (model) data and stores it in NetCDF
files. We wish to adopt one standard header convention for all the
NetCDF files generated by our application.

I noticed that your grib decoder writes out NetCDF files using the NUWG
convention. If just one standard notation were the goal, then NUWG would
be as good as any other convention for us. I read a little about various
possible conventions on your website.

But one of the other goals is also the software that processes these
NetCDF files - in particular the overlay generation software. At the moment
we are using GrADS for overlay generation and GMT for generating
base maps. How does NUWG relate to COARDS, if at all? The reason I
am enquiring is because GrADS seems to process NetCDF files written
in COARDS convention, although there are ways to make it work with
other conventions, so I was told.

Could you please suggest a convention to use? Do you see any problems
with using NUWG convention as you do? Thank you for your help.
sincerely,
Ramesh Mantri

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Hi Ramesh:
We recommend using the CF-1 Conventions for gridded data. These are a superset of COARDS. 

 http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/eaton/cf-metadata/index.html

NUWG is considered outdated; we are converting our decoder to use CF.

We also have some new recommendations for global metadata at:
http://my.unidata.ucar.edu/content/software/netcdf-java/formats/DataDiscoveryAttConvention.html 

These are being considered for inclusion into CF.